RIO ART RESIDENCY 2025
We’re immensely grateful to our patrons, without whom the residency would not have been possible:
In July, 13 artists spent a week in Rio de Janeiro creating together, within the theme “When pixels learned to samba”, learning from each other and their surroundings and experiencing what, for many, was a new environment ripe for inspiration.
The programme will end in September, when artists will take part in a group show at SuperRare’s Offline gallery, in NYC, and their works will become available to be collected.
In the past 100 years, Brazil experienced several currents of creative expression - the birth of Brazilian Modernism in 1922 which inspired the fine arts, poetry, music, cinema, architecture and symbolised a break with the past; the rise of samba and carnival from its origins to the mainstream in the 1920s and beyond; the dawn of Cinema Novo, Tropicalia and the Neo-concrete Movement; the resistance to the Military regime from 1964-1985; the awakening of the favelas through Rio Funk music in the 1990s, and more.
Always fertile ground for expression, Rio itself was the origin place of many of these movements or offered the perfect conditions for them to thrive. Cariocas (people born in Rio) are known for their hunger for beauty though not in the traditional sense of the word. Beauty that explodes into existence amidst struggle, pain, chaos, injustice and violence. They embrace the future while constantly looking to the past - firmly rooted while freely evolving.
Digital art, where the possibilities for creating, exploring and innovating are endless, is the natural step forward for artists everywhere to flourish. It’s also a vehicle for Rio artists to connect and exchange their ideas, power and vibrancy with digital artists from elsewhere in the world. This exchange is what the Rio Art Residency is all about.
