Residências cruzadas Artes & Ciências França-Brasil: Emma Charrin

“From Espinouse to Espinhaço: a dialogue between Arts, Sciences, and Territories at the frontiers of the Ecumene”

As part of the France–Brazil 2025 season, the Institut Libertas (France), in partnership with JA.CA – Center for Art and Technology and the Albuquerque Contemporary Gallery in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, is launching a cross-residency Arts & Sciences program. The initiative promotes collaboration between French and Brazilian artists and researchers, exploring current themes related to the relationships between human beings and the environment, and creating original works that engage with the identities of the Haut-Languedoc region (France) and Minas Gerais (Brazil), where the residencies take place. Focused on creation, research, and mediation, the program seeks to strengthen cultural dialogue, highlight natural and cultural heritage, and promote artists internationally by offering grants, accommodation, and workspaces.

Institut Libertas is a French NGO that has been developing scientific cooperation projects between France and Brazil since 2007. JA.CA – Center for Art and Technology and Albuquerque Contemporary Gallery have joined forces with Institut Libertas to create a program of artistic and scientific cross-residencies between France and Brazil, with the aim of expanding and strengthening the international reach of Brazilian and French artists.

The first cycle of the program, “From Espinouse to Espinhaço” (2025–2027), emphasizes the similarities between Haut-Languedoc (France) and Minas Gerais (Brazil), where certain geological, biological, and landscape affinities—alongside a rich natural, cultural, archaeological, paleontological, and anthropological heritage—offer immense potential for scientific and artistic investigation. The program fosters dialogue with the territories, their landscapes, and their communities, valuing the natural and cultural heritage of both countries. The dichotomy between the preservation and exploitation of these resources raises, in both Brazil and France, numerous questions for artistic and scientific research concerning impacts on the landscape, biodiversity, and the environment at large, as well as on local populations, in this era known as the Anthropocene.

In 2025, thanks to the support of the Institut Français and the Embassy of France in Brazil for the France–Brazil season, the French artist Emma Charrin inaugurates the program with a residency at JA.CA – Center for Art and Technology in Belo Horizonte, followed by an exhibition at the Albuquerque Contemporary Gallery.