Beyond Residencies: Living and Working in Berlin
Virtual mentor presentation
Friday, August 26, 2022
12–1pm
Join Hamiltonian Mentor Isabel Manalo and guest speaker Charys Wilson and Ian Jehele as they discuss the possibility of living and working in Berlin as an artist that operates outside the typical artist residency framework. Visual artist, educator, and independent curator, Isabel Manalo will shed light on how and why she chose to move to Berlin with her entire family, from 2012–2015. Isabel will share insight into her own practice as she was working toward a museum show while in Berlin. Moreover, she will include images of curatorial projects she produced through her online journal The Studio Visit, as well as her time as a visiting critic at the Takt Artist Residency.
Additionally, a current artist in residence at Takt Berlin will be joining the conversation. Charys Wilson is an Irish artist from Belfast, and this is her second time living abroad while making art.
The artistic process must be mutable. As an artist, it is through the will to make the necessary changes for this growth and development to occur. While it is also necessary for consistency and stability in ones studio, it is also vital to have massive change that throws ones psyche into a whole new milieu. This talk will be about literally uprooting oneself from ones comfort zone and how this kind of life change can be a fundamental artistic change both creatively, intellectually, and emotionally.
About
Isabel Manalo is a visual artist, educator and curator-at-large. Her work is represented in Washington, DC, by Addison/Ripley Fine Art, where she has had four solo shows. She had solo shows at museums and galleries, including the Orlando Museum of Art, the Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery at Stony Brook University, and the Castle Gallery at Glen Echo Park. She is also Founder and Director of the online journal The Studio Visit (TSV). Since 2008 she has featured artists in their studios talking about their process and ideas, with a focus on underrepresented artists of color. Isabel served on the Board of Directors and the Visual Arts Committee for the DC Arts Center from 2010–2012. From 2012–2013 she served as Visiting Artist and Curator at Takt International Artist Residency in Berlin, where she lived with her family from 2012–2015. Isabel received her MFA from the Yale School of Art, BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and BS from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Charys Wilson is a fine artist working in a variety of mediums but primarily drawing and installation. With an awareness of the current climate crisis, she creates works from recycled and biodegradable materials. She earned her BFA in Fine Art at Aberystwyth University, majoring in printmaking, and graduating with a first-class honors in 2015. This background in printmaking often impacts her work, in the form of layering, concealing, cutting, or working in a negative format. Her work focuses on modern-day societies’ relationship with nature, allowing contemplative time and space for the viewer to reconnect with often overlooked or underappreciated aspects of the natural world. She is currently pursuing an MFA at Ulster University Belfast.
Ian Jehle is a Canadian artist and teacher based in Berlin and Washington, DC. An adventurer of interdisciplinary explorations, theories, and different modes of making, he’s served as an adjunct lecturer at American University and held residencies at the Banff Arts Centre in Alberta and GlogauAIR in Berlin. Jehle’s pieces and installations have been exhibited across the in Europe, Japan, and the US, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Katzen Museum in DC, the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Gallery-éf in Tokyo, the Reinraum in Düsseldorf, Germany, as well as at the Vorspiel/Transmediale Arts Festival in Berlin.
There will be an opportunity for the conversation at the end of the program.