Lab Verde

On April 20th, organizers of the LABVERDE residency as well some artist participants will present their work in the Brazilian Amazon. Topics will include ecology, art, design and climate change.

LABVERDE: Art Immersion Program in the Amazon

LABVERDE was created to strengthen the limits of art through a broad array of experiences, knowledge sets and cultural perspectives involving art, science and nature. The program’s main goal is to promote artistic creation through a constructive debate about environmental issues generated by both theory and life experiences in the Amazon rainforest. Developed in association with Manifesta Art and Culture and The National Institute for Amazonian Research, LABVERDE promotes an intensive experience in the rainforest mediated by a multidisciplinary team of highly qualified specialists in art, humanity, biology, ecology and natural science.



BIOS:

Lilian Fraiji:
Lilian Fraiji has a master’s degree in Curating Arts from the University of Ramon Llull, Barcelona. She is an independent curator and producer based in Manaus, Amazon. She is the co-founder of Manifesta, an organization dedicated to develop multidisciplinary contents involving art, science and
environment. Was the chief curator of the Amazon Pinacotheque and has curated several art exhibitions involving the subject of the Amazon. Currently she is the coordinator and the curator of LABVERDE program and is responsible for program’s social contribution at Bosque da Ciência/Inpa

Laurent Troost:
Born in Brussels, Belgium. Has a Master degree in Architecture and Urbanism from the Victor Horta Institute, Brussels (2001), and a specialization on Geography and the City at Escola da Cidade, São Paulo (2010). Was project leader for important architecture offices in Brazil, Spain, Holland and Dubai, such as Office for Metropolitan Architecture – Rem Koolhaas and Studio Arthur Casas. Since 2008 has worked on several projects involving arts, architecture, urbanism. Currently is the Urban Planning Director at Manaus Municipality. Since 2013 is responsible for the social media and the coordination of LABVERDE’s program.


Bia Monteiro:
Born in 1976, in Rio de Janeiro and is now based in NYC. She Received a MFA degree from the International Center of Photography in New York where she was awarded with the Director’s Fellowship in 2015/16. Bia is a visual artist working primarily with photography, video and installations. Her work references matters of displacement, as well as environmental concerns (mainly in Brazil) through the use of human body, historical references and architecture. Bia has exhibited her work in Brazil, Europe, Japan and New York, and is part of the Studio Duo collective in NYC.


Bianca Lee Vasquez:
Bianca Lee Vasquez, of cuban-ecuadorian origins, lives and works in paris. She works with nature in a way that is emphatically corporal, striving for a communion between body, nature and art. Her ephemeral interventions or performances are best described by an earthbody practice documented in photographie or video. Her performative actions with trees or large stones are as though her body formed and integral part of these natural elements. Although she frequently uses her own body, she is rarely representing herself literally. The body defining metaphorical symbols. The common thread running through her works draws from her sustained interest in her paternal ancestral Incas belief that cosmology and the human body were interrelated and the promulgation of Ayni, meaning balance and reciprocity in Quechua.


Daniel Kukla:
Visual artist, currently residing in New York City. Artistic practice informed by intersection of work as a photo-based artist and formal training in biological and anthropological sciences. Works at juncture of these disciplines, creating work that has the power to articulate our ever changing relationship with the natural world.



Lisa Schonberg:
Lisa Schonberg was born in 1977 in Staten Island, USA, and is based in Portland, Oregon, where she lives and works. Lisa is a percussionist, composer, writer, teacher and natural historian. She started playing drums as a child, studied ecology and entomology through college and graduate school, and has since traveled extensively to carry out fieldwork and perform. She integrates her interests through creative documentation of soundscapes, insects, and habitat. Lisa’s place-based compositions are performed by her percussion and noise ensemble Secret Drum Band and in solo performance, and she drums in Explode Into Colors. Lisa is the author of The DIY Guide to Drums and The Hylaeus Project: A Documentation of the Endangered Native Bees of Hawaii.

Michael Clemow:

Michael Clemow is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His work is based around the idea of listening as a creative act. It is manifested in installations and performances using field recordings, photographs, and objects. Documents of experience are turned into improvised sites that are born from and encourage deep listening and a sense of place. Michael graduated from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU in 2009. His work has been shown at Exit Art, Spectrum NYC, Dixon Place, AC Institute, Radiator Gallery, The Center for Book Arts, Howl! Happening, and Mana Contemporary. He has performed in Art in Odd Places 2008, DUMBO Art Festival 2009, Festival MOD (Guadalajara, MX) 2012, River to River Festival 2015, and Movement Research Festival 2017. He was awarded the Sonic Mmabolela sound art residency in Limpopo, South Africa in 2013 and 2015; BSMT Residency at Mana Contemporary 2016-2017; LABVERDE 2017; and LMCC Workspace Residency 2017-2018.

Tatiana Arocha:

Tatiana Arocha is a visual artist from Bogotá, Colombia based in Brooklyn, NY. The daughter of one of Colombia’s leading anthropologists and environmentalists, Arocha grew up in the midst of nature, camping since childhood with her father and his friends across the diverse ecological regions of Colombia, such as the Raudal de Maypures in the Orinoquia, which the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt called the Eighth Wonder of the World. But it was the Ensenada de Utria in the jungles of The Choco, the last place that the artist visited before leaving her homeland, which ultimately shaped her artistic worldview. She has understood since she was very young that nature needs to be explored in order to find a real connection, and flora and fauna should be encountered in their natural habitats to be fully grasped.

A graphic designer by training, Arocha’s work spans a range of media such as drawing, large collage installations and motion graphics. In all formats, her work combines her recollections of these magnificent places with a fearless work ethic. In each piece, her attention to detail impresses on the viewer her ecological activism, affection and responsibility to nature.

Lucy Helton:
Born in London and based in New York, LUCY HELTON received her master’s degree in fine art photography from Hartford Art School, CT, in 2014. Rising from a necessity to express her personal anxieties and concerns about the environment, her first photobook "Actions of Consequence" was nominated for the MACK First Book Award 2014, shortlisted for the Kassel Dummy Award 2015, and The Anamorphosis Prize 2015. Her most recent book "Transmission" (Silas Finch, 2015) is a communication from our future to our recent past and it was shortlisted for the Paris Photo-Aperture First Book Award 2015. Helton is immersed in photo book making and has participated in various book fairs and festivals in New York, L.A., London, Germany and France.

Related Events:
April 15th Presentations & Performances at Trans-Pecos, Brooklyn
April 19th LABVERDE opening + artists talk/performance
Exhibition Stand4 from April 20th to May 31th