The Nordic art association (NKF) invited Michal Makaresco (ISR) to The Nordic guest studio in Malongen, Stockholm, Sweden -Artist Residency Program.
The duration of the stay -2/3/2019– 31/3/2019 includes public events and activities*.
The Nordic guest studio in Malongen is situated at Nytorget in the Söder district, in the center of Stockholm.
The Nordic art association (NKF) is an organization of visual artists in the Nordic countries aiming to create networks.
"Untitled", 2018
Michal Makaresco
Michal Makaresco (b.1982), works with mixed media, mostly found objects, raw clay sculpture, staged and snapshot photography. Her art can be viewed in exhibitions and some of her process can be seen through her highly active Instagram account and alter ego vanesa_dvd.
Michal Makaresco and I have known each since 2006 when we attended Bezalel art academy (B.F.A) and worked together before from and with the notion of friendship and professional respect. I believe her work is exemplifying contemporary Feminism. Having a personal interest in the fourth wave vs. the third wave - I place Makaresco’s work as hybrid. It is online and innovative yet not the somewhat superficial, fluffy, soft, girly, smooth and pink popular that often made by Millennials.
It continues the engagement in micro-politics with a transgressive attitude. Offering the crumble and decay of those iconic statement artworks that have been swallowed into the general art-history discourse and maybe lost their power due to lack of controversy and sense of urgency.
Lately, In order to describe Makaresco’s body of work, I was considering two terms as references.
One is Baroque (The highly ornate and extravagant style that flourished in Europe in the early 17th late 18th century) mainly because of it’s characteristics of Intensity and emotion, in a moment in time, deep shadows and diagonals which gives a feeling of drama and instability as well as close and real and emphasis on the body.
Details of paintings by the Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio 1607-10
The other much later term is Giallo (20th-century Italian thriller or horror genre of literature and film) due to the elements of Simulated Gore, fashion editorial styling, explicit sexual content, extreme lighting, death, nudity, obsession and the idea photograph as a witness to a crime or a dangerous activity.
Screenshots from various Giallo films
Makaresco is using Instagram as a medium rather than a platform, challenging the authority of representation in a way to act as a disruptive agent in a network which can be considered as public/counter-public/private sphere. As Xennial, being born in the early eighties, having not born into new media and Internet but gradually develop beside it, she has a unique perspective regarding it. This point of view inevitably creates a more critical and aware use than Y and Z generations.
Selected posts from vanesa_dvd
Considering the fact that Makaresco’s creating mostly in her home yet has an international audience, It would be interesting to test the process of Glocalization and also to explore the potential of the Artist as a tourist that continues being both exhibitionist and voyeur in a foreign culture and place. The Nordic Guest Studio will be used as a nomadic studio and also a temporary broadcasting hub for vanesa_dvd. Optionally It could also host an open studio - exhibition.
Michal Makaresco (ISR) originally from Bat Hen, Hefer Valley, lives and works in Tel-Aviv. The artist earned her BFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts in Jerusalem (2010), as well as additional photography studies at the Camera Obscura School for the Arts (2006) and Ha'midrasha College (2017).
Planned events during March: Open event that will include presentations and a talk. The vanesa_dvd Instagram account to broadcast work in and out of the studio space.
The Open studio and feature an exhibition that sums up the time spent in Stockholm. Specific dates and further information will be advertise through NKF site and FB page.
* This text is an edited version of the project proposal submitted to the NKF on September 2018.
Malongen Residency / Nordisk Gästateljé Malongen Nytorget 15 A SE - 116 41 Stockholm Sweden