RIO ART RESIDENCY 2024
The inaugural Rio Art Residency, a week-long artists’ residency in Rio de Janeiro in June 2024, brought together 19 established and emerging contemporary artists from Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, United States, Turkey, Indonesia and the Dominican Republic. In partnership with Transient Labs and SuperRare, and supported by 452b, Woodmere Club Cap, White Walls, and individual patrons, the residency made groundbreaking use of Transient’s erc-7160 token technology by offering collectors a gallery of works by different artists in one token.
The residency’s closing party and exhibition was attended by Rio’s opinion formers, artists, curators and collectors, and had huge impact in the local art scene.
An exhibition and panel in NYC in July 2024 marked the launch of the art drop, where artists sold a 1/1 token and limited editions.
The 2024 residency was supported by:Transient Labs, 452b, Woodmere Club Cap. Patrons: Sendrock, Blondie23LMD, Eternal Pepe, Jancarlo Sanchez.
LEAD ARTIST
EFDOT
Efdot is a visual artist based in NYC. Throughout his career, he has cultivated an art practice and boutique creative studio that encompasses various analog and digital art projects. He started in graphic/product design and custom typography, studying at Drexel University and completing his studies in 2012. Since then, his work has been showcased in exhibitions across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia, featuring large-scale murals, paintings, screenprints, letterpress prints, animations, sculptures, and more.
ARTISTS
Alimo
Alimo (b. 1985, Portland, OR) is a contemporary fine artist and digital creator based between Brooklyn, NYC, and the West Coast. Working across acrylic painting, murals, NFTs, and daily sketch practices, his signature style blends curvy post-pop imagery, highly saturated colors, and expressive hand-drawn letters.
Rebecca Rose
Rebecca Rose is an award winning collage artist exploring various collage methods including sculptural, digital, immersive, and holographic collages. Rose’s work is in several private collections, and has been awarded fellowships for residencies at AOTM, Ox-Bow/SAIC and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. She is a recipient of multiple prominent grants and awards, and creates works in her Florida studio.
MUMBOT
MUMBOT is an artist, storyteller, world-builder, toy designer and founder of MUMBOT WORLD brand, and international creative community GHOST CLUB. MUMBOT is the Designer Toy Award’s “Breakthrough Artist of the Year,” published in several publications, exhibits internationally and has apparel and plush currently available in over 40 specialty shops in the US, including Hot Topic, Box Lunch, Newbury Comics, and other fine retailers.
Foodmasku
Foodmasku is a multimedia artist based in New York City. He started making his meals into masks three years ago. One of his colleagues got on a video call and couldn’t turn off their pickle face filter. So foodmasku decided to take his dinner and put it over his face every day during the beginning of the pandemic. The New York Times selected his Instagram account as “one of five art accounts to follow” in September of 2020. He began to mint his videos and photos as NFTs in 2021 to set up provenance because they were being reposted without context and without his permission.
Luciana Guerra
Luciana Guerra is a visual artist from Argentina who creates physical and digital artworks. She has a degree in Fine Arts and participated in several art residencies. Formed as a traditional artist, Luciana started exploring digital tools in 2019 and in 2021 she found that web3 was the right place to expand her art. Throughout her career she’s won several national art prizes and her art has been exhibited in Argentina, Mexico, USA, China, Italy, France, and was selected by Artcrush Gallery to display her art in Belgium in April 2024.
Ottis
Ottis Ots is a Brazilian contemporary artist, who draws inspiration from the exploration of colours with vivid contrasts. His work contains graffiti elements and a critical perspective associated with vandalism.Ottis’ purple nature has become his signature, and he is well-known for the “Purple Valley” AR experience, which has over 300 million photos taken worldwide and over 9 billion impressions.
Wizard james
James Bristow also known as Wizard James is an artist, film maker, and animator living and working in Hollywood, California. Always fascinated with visual storytelling, art, and technology, when he’s not on a film set or animating for film/tv/video games, he’s tinkering with his old analog CRT monitors and glitch equipment from the 80s and 90s, creating crunchy holographic glitch art and dreaming up creative use cases for blockchain to fund art.
André Dahmer
André Dahmer is a visual artist, poet and cartoonist from Rio de Janeiro. He works with several mediums including acrylics, fabrics, ink and watercolour. He uses visual cues and word play to create many of his works. Dahmer is also a well-known newspaper cartoonist in Brazil. He’s the author of cartoon Malvados and daily cartoons in the two main news publications in the country. He’s won several prestigious Brazilian awards for his work, which has also been shown in prominent art fairs and galleries in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Rachel ST Wood
Rachel, a traveling photographer, traded career stability for suitcase Tetris, sacrificed her comfort to pursue her curiosity, and gave up her savings to have life stories. Since quitting her office job in 2018, and buying a one way ticket to Peru, her camera has been her constant companion and compass around the world. Since then, her work has garnered worldwide recognition and she has since been invited to speak at several web3 crypto conferences.
LukO
Luko is an abstract expressionist and Colombian street artist who represents the youthful soul and the unconscious through colors. Art for him is an expression, therapy, and a way to connect directly with his inner child. He’s constantly seeking ways to share the Art of Living with the world.
Cameron Smith
Cameron Smith is a versatile artist born in Baltimore, deeply influenced by the rich craftsmanship of his Northern Irish heritage. His grandfather, a typesetter and woodworker, introduced him to the world of art, teaching him drawing techniques and the concept of automatism. Themes in Cameron’s artworks include natural landscapes, faces, and figures, which he captures through mediums such as watercolors, coloured pencils, and acrylic on canvas. Cameron is dedicated to the ideals of continuous learning, community, and the fusion of traditional and modern art forms.
Sarkis
For over a decade Sarkis has worked professionally as a designer, photographer and art director. He has been deeply observing and participating in creation since he can remember. Love, nature, philosophy, spirituality, and life are his sources of inspiration. For Sarkis, creating art is as natural as eating and breathing; it’s a vital part of his livelihood. As a self-taught multidisciplinary artist, he’s been on the artist’s journey since he was a child.
Carlos Aquino
Carlos Aquino is a Dominican-born artist who is deeply inspired by the vibrant colors and natural beauty of his homeland.vThemes in his artworks include portraits, island landscapes and the universal beauty of eyes, which he captures through the medium of digital creations and acrylic on canvas. Carlos is committed to the ideals of inclusivity, community and shared knowledge.
Mateu Velasco
Mateu Velasco was born in New York City in 1980, but spent the best part of his life living and working in Rio de Janeiro. He is one of a small group of multimedia artists from Brazil’s arts capital who have caught the attention of international collectors in recent years. Known for his distinct, explosive style, Velasco has been hailed as one of the few young Brazilian talents who can move with ease between innovative styles, unexplored themes, and deep into the murky depths of social conscience.
Daniel Tucci
Tucci is a visual artist from Rio de Janeiro. For the past 20 years he’s been mainly creating as a tattoo artist in Brazil and as a guest in other countries. He has a body of work in contemporary art using several different mediums, including painting, sculpture and collage, with skulls as a recurring theme. Tucci’s concept focuses on identity and his development as an artist, using materials and touching on themes connected to his craft as a tattoo artist.
SirenAI
Jenifer Pepen Aquino, also known as SirenAi, is a first-generation American of Dominican descent. She is an artist, poet, curator, photographer, public speaker, and co-founder of the One Love Art DAO. Growing up in a multicultural environment, SirenAi developed a deep appreciation for history and the arts. Through her artworks, she expresses universal stories on spirituality, mythology, history, relationships, and her experience as a Latina woman.
DrainedEye
Jason Sanders is a Philadelphia Artist exploring spirituality, purpose, and enlightenment. His works carry a visual short hand that serves to highlight transparency: the chaos and energy of the past pitted against the intention of the present moment. Jason explores humanity through the balance of thought and acceptance and the range of emotions cultivated from these practices.
David Moriarty
David has been an artist for as long as he can remember. He attended The Ringling college of art and Design for graphic design in 1990 but ended up dropping out after a year and a half. After school he worked different jobs to make ends meet and the one job he valued most was working at an art supply store. That’s where he picked up his first paints and canvas and fell in love with the fine arts. While working at the art store he was given some scrap glass to take home and became curious to see what it would be like to paint on glass. He was very interested in how the paint looked behind it. Since that time, in 1994, he has continued to paint in reverse glass, a medium that has become his specialty.