Arrudiar

As a platform for exchange between Europe and the Global South, Verso Residency proposes a space for experimentation dedicated to practices that investigate territories and displacement, forms of coexistence, and the circulation of artistic practices.

During his residency, Gabriel Petribú investigated the geometric patterns of Portuguese azulejo tilework.

Beja Journey

Beja, a city situated along the route between Seville and Lisbon, emerged as a place of transit between Moorish and Iberian matrices, giving rise to a form of tilework marked by crossings and cultural intersections. In contrast to the privi di funzione Italian frescoes associated with his training in Florence, the artist shifted blue from ornament to structure, saturating the colours and returning — as in the fresco and Moorish heritage — to an aesthetic that responded to the “fear of the void.” During his stay in Lisbon, he also worked through prompts that turned artificial intelligence into a metaphor for the colonial process itself: images emerging from minimal material and becoming stabilised as truth.

Marcelo Silveira

Marcelo Silveira’s research began with his visits to street markets in São Paulo, where he encountered tablecloths originating from the island of Madeira. This encounter led to his interest in the colonial category of madeira de lei, a Portuguese term referring to valuable or legally protected timber, now largely unfamiliar in Portugal but still present in Brazilian vocabulary.

In the studio, Marcelo’s interest in the artist’s book unfolded into a book made of wood: folds added to the tablecloths created a “tablecloth-book” that wove together a protective surface. Through these shifts in function, a tablecloth becomes a rodilha — a cloth used as a pad or support — the rodilha becomes a sculpture, and the sculpture becomes a vessel for porcelain.

Arrudiar

For both artists, Arrudiar became the name for a research method: a vocation for detour as a form of knowledge, a commitment to that which moves between what has been and what may yet become.