marianne soisalo
Founder of A L T O Art Residency Project. A permaculturist, creative and seeker, Marianne has an MSc in Zoology at the University of Cambridge. She is a big cat scientist, and a small cat lover, having studied jaguars for years living in the wild, she divided her life between living on the roof of Bruce - her faithful Landrover in the Pantanal swamps, and her busy London life. There she owned and managed the infamous Soho drag queen cabaret, Madame Jojo's, producing first class cabaret for Londoners and hosting all kinds of artistic events at the venue.
Marianne is a dedicated environmental activist, graphic designer and photographer, engaged in many projects that bring attention to protecting our planet and manifesting a more conscious way of living in harmony with Nature.
Mariri Jungle Lodge, where A L T O Art Residency is hosted, is a true reflection of her beliefs. It is a loving home, healing retreat and dynamic permaculture centre in Chapada dos Veadeiros, an endless plateau which lies on a quartz crystal bed with more than 200 waterfalls. Mariri gathers magical objects and souvenirs from all over the world and creates an unique architecture that interacts with Nature, stimulating a strong sense of belonging and creativity.
She is also the founder of Eco Nois, a local very popular eco-cultural hub in Alto Paraíso, where she during various years promotes vegetarianism as a helpful way in which to decrease our negative impact and where she has called for a collective movement to join forces in various transition town projects related to a more sustainable future for the region.
Main projects in town include the permacultural urban gardens with examples of bio-construction, organic gardening, medicinal plants, alternative technologies, animal rights and sustainability and a community Arts Project that raises awareness about the man-made fires that yearly wipe out extensive tracts and the local flora and fauna (www.chegadefogonachapada.blogspot.com).
rodrigo garcia dutra
mariana bassani
Rodrigo Garcia Dutra is a visual artist trained in Fine Arts and Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London, UK. He has received awards from the São Paulo Biennial Foundation, Brazil Contemporary Art Program, among others. He participated in the following exhibitions:
'10th Mercosur Biennial: Messages from A New America ', Porto Alegre, Brazil,' Tomorrow: London', South London Gallery, 'Histórias Mestiças' at Tomie Ohtake Institute,
São Paulo,' Abstract Ground 'at the Marian Cramer Projects, Amsterdam, Netherlands,
' 18th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil: 30th Anniversary, São Paulo and 'Open Cube' at White Cube, London, UK.
His work involves constructing a collection of facts, found objects, gifts and places where he traveled and re-work these elements through drawing, painting, bronze casting, charcoal strokes, video editing and arranging / re-arranging them in space. In this way, these moments or situations are put in evidence by throwing a new light on them and find out how they influenced the aesthetics of the world as we perceive it today.
Mariana Bassani was born in São Paulo, 1980 and grew up in Brazil. She now lives between London and Alto Paraíso de Goiás. She’s a professional photographer since 2002 and has been involved in many ecological projects such as that of field assistant to researcher Marianne Soisalo who conducted a Jaguar conservation project in Pantanal, Brazil (2003-2005), image bank manager at Terra Virgem (Book publisher) 2005-2007 and photographer and artist at Art Exhibitions for Elephant Family (Charity that organises events for Elephant Conservation in Asia). She exhibited in a group exhibition at Fauna Gallery in São Paulo, 2015 besides being a DJ and party organiser at Disco Apocalypso in London. She idealized and organized the Kaxinawás (indigenous tribe from the Amazon) blessing to all plants of the Planet at the Palm house at Kew Gardens. Her studies included Biology College at Mackenzie, São Paulo, Photography Diploma at SENAC, São Paulo and Garden Design in London. Her interests include Ecology, Nature and night sky Photography,
Art exhibitions: Disco Music, Astronomy and Botany. She also got a London tree and woodlands photography award in 2010.
rafael perez evans
Spanish/Welsh artist, co-founder of A L T O Art Residency. Lives and works in Barcelona, Spain. Rafael received a BA in Fine art from Goldsmiths University, London UK.
Currently completing a two years residency at Hangar Barcelona. His works have been shown in Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, U.S, London, Berlin & Madrid.
Through the use of research and ethnography, he is excavating and unearthing lost stories, newspapers, images & local rumours. These then get reworked and result in installations which use photography, found imagery, video, objects & painting, that produce a further blurring of their contents source as well as bring to surface the problems inherent in reading a narrative.
As a sort archeologist from the ‘West’ he has been working and living in countries such as Mexico, US, Cuba & Brazil, where he operated within a certain western nostalgia for a rawer past, creating works and extracting source material to then reconstruct in Europe, in this process also encountering a certain post-colonial anxiety which hovers through his practice.
In his ‘diggings’ we encounter various sites & research centres, an example is the history of sugar cane plantations in Brazil, which intertwines economy, land, labor, colonies, and whose ghost – spectre is still ever present.
Preoccupations in unearthing peculiar local stories is part of the foundation for this type of archeology, where the findings of his ‘diggings’ can bring some further questioning into the subject of how we relate to hierarchy within the information receive in stories, history and rumours.
Rafael has completed a 3 months residency “Sassafras” in Liberty, Tennessee USA 2011. Co – directed Romita 26 arts-studio in Mexico City 2012, as well completing a 3 months residency in Red studios Sao Paulo 2014, directing A L T O Art Residency in Brazil as well as being part of Despina & Gazua projects in Rio de Janeiro. He Taught photography at the University of Rochester, (UK) and recently his film Cruising Tabernas was released at international film festivals.
karolina daria flora
Karolina, co-founder of A L T O Art Residency, is a self-taught multi-disciplinary artist, who has worked in a myriad of different projects, mostly as a costume designer, sometimes as a performer.
She has always been inspired by natives of all cultures, influenced by memories from her early childhood, spent travelling with her parents in a camper van in southern and eastern Europe. She was lucky during these trips to encounter, play, sing and dance with the last real gypsies, who forever fascinated and inspired her art and life philosophy.
Through her exquisite costume designs and photography she creates an imaginary cosmic tribe, in love, uniting all seemingly separated nations as one.
Karolina uses photography as an important tool for sharing her unique perception of reality; weaving to manifest her love for colour, light and sound, astronomy and sacred geometry. She also works within installation, sculpture and land art. Nature for her is the most creative and magical working and living space.
Her biggest passions are music and dance, without which she can not live a day. She is a lithotherapist and has been using quartz crystal healing since 2005, highly intuitive, psychic, researcher, observer, forever curious about the mysteries of the Universe.
A nomadic soul, her innate love for the Brazilian savannah is shared between living by the ocean in Iceland, where she moved to in 2006, and her hideaway in the enchanted Carpathian Mountains in Poland, her birthplace.
At the moment Karolina is eagerly studying the names of Brazilian plants, birds and stars of the southern hemisphere.
