The program of the residency, of Art Explora in this villa, it’s an open call that is inviting artists to apply with an idea of a research or a project that they would like to develop. And from this call, there was a jury of six members that is selecting up to 30 artists a year. These artists apply from more than a 100 countries from the world. So from all over the world. And the sessions are divided into three sessions a year. These artists, they live in the, they live in the house. There’s a studio, they have a studio space, and they have a working and living space here. They have a grant to develop a new work. And they also have a lot of help from the team, us here, to link them to the local context and to also link them to the scene here and to help them develop the research that they want to do […] For the Albanian artists that are part of the residency, this, it’s more of an emotional journey, I would say. This is what I’ve seen. [Diona Budima:] A lot of them told us that they were having very vivid dreams when they came here. [Nita Deda:] Yes, yes. And there was one idea. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, but we had one artist that had a very good idea of putting a box and of people writing their dreams, of what they’re dreaming here, and maybe after ten years, to have an archive of what people are dreaming here. And maybe after ten years to open up. I think it was Stanislava Pinchuk that had this idea of– then after ten years to open up this, and to maybe, like, do something to this archive of dreams here. But yeah, I mean, for example, Stanislava also connected to her own upbringing. It’s not that, you know, that this is a trigger of also like other similar realities, you know, of growing up in the Soviet Union, for example.
