Artist residencies in Kaunas

Two photo artist were invited by KAUNAS PHOTO festival for this year artist residencies in Kaunas. The new works about Kaunas made by Conchi Martínez (Spain) and Emanuela Colombo (Italy). The works will be presented for the public at the second part of this year.

Photographer Conchi Martínez made her artist residency at the end of May. She created the work called “KAUNOPOLY”. The inspiration for it came from the game “Monopoly” which is well known to everybody. Conchi Martínez applied to KAUNAS PHOTO festival open call with the work „Barcepoly“. Mindaugas Kavaliauskas director of KAUNAS PHOTO festival tried to play that game in one of the squares of Europe cities. He liked it and invited photographer to create something similar in Kaunas.

At the board of “KAUNOPOLY” will be seen not official and the most impressive places of Kaunas city. The aim of the author was to reveal the portrait of Kaunas and it’s historical and daily details, this is why she had a huge help from the locals volunteers: Simona Savickaitė, Ed Caroll, Raimonda Šiudeikytė, Indrė Mačiulytė, Kamilė Riaubaitė, Stefanija Paulauskaitė.

Conchi Martínez born in Soria in 1963. Shortly after, her family moved to Barcelona and it’s there where she has taken roots and lived since then. It was not until 1996 that she was given a reflex camera as a present. That was her starting point to be passionately fond of photography. At this moment Conchi was already deeply attracted by it, but it was more as a spectator than as an executor. When artist came into contact with B/W laboratory, she discovered the magic of the developing process and the experimentation with ancient techniques, that still astonishes photographer nowadays, and to which she keeps on devoting part of her energies. Conchi Martínez enjoy taking photos if she has a clear reason to begin to do it, an idea or subject to develop, when she goes out with the intention to take them. Taking photos compulsively doesn’t motivate her at all; Photographer not one of these people who usually pick up the camera, and lesser from the spread of the huge range of electronic devices with which people tend to bombard us with images at present.

KAUNAS PHOTO festival invited Emanuela Colombo for two weeks artist residency on June. She made photos of a part of Kaunas district Žaliakalnis also known as “Brazilka”. This part which is surrounded by Jonavos, Varnių, Žemaičių streets and Savanoriai prospect became a place for artist work. This place is interesting because it became a living place for Lithuanian migrants who came back from Brazil long time ago. These people started to build their poor houses which were very similar like in Brazil. Emanuela Colombo got a lot of help from locals. She heard a lot of stories, legends and created a new work of “Brazilka”.

Emanuela Colombo after graduating in Communication Sciences at IULM in Milan, worked for almost 10 years in purchasing department of several companies in the area. Finally, she realized that it was not for her and decided to dedicate herself to her passion, photography. In 2007 Emanuela attended a Master in “Photography and Visual Design” at NABA in Milan. Since the beginning of 2007 she works with several NGOs to produce reportages, stories about their activities in Italy and abroad. Photographfer published her work on Italian and foreign magazines.

KAUNAS PHOTO festival organizes artist residencies since 2016. The new iconography of Kaunas created by: “The Caravan Gallery” (UK), Sergiy Lebedynskyy (Ukraine/Germany); Henrik Duncker (Finland), Mariusz Forecki (Poland) (2016); Dorota Dawidowicz (Poland), Andreas Müller-Pohle (Germany) and Jari Silomäki (Finland) (2017).