Stop. Look Back. Look Ahead. Proceed. e-residency | 5 artists selected!

Casa Asia and ASEF through its arts website culture360.ASEF.org are pleased to announce the selection of 5 emerging artists from across Asia and Europe that will participate in the upcoming Stop. Look Back. Look Ahead. Proceed. e-residency on arts & climate change. The selected artists will work online over the next 8 weeks in 2 groups, under the mentorship of Kamini RAMACHANDRAN, director of MoonShadow Stories and The Storytelling Centre Ltd.

Here are the selected artists who will take part in the residency:

Group 1: Biki Wabihamdika (Indonesia) & María Laura Carrillo Neira (Spain)

Biki Wabihamdika (Indonesia)

Biki Wabihamdika is a sound artist and traditional music teacher who graduated from Karawitan Art study, Indonesia Institute of The Arts of Padangpanjang. He masters various Minangkabau musical instruments, especially percussion and wind instruments. His projects and works then often talk about sound and its relationship to social conditions in the location where the musical instrument originates. Biki is actively involved with the Gubuak Kopi Community, a community that focuses on research and development of art and media based in Solok City, West Sumatra. Together with Gubuak Kopi, he is actively involved in art practices that are closely related to its society. Now, he lives and works in Solok, West Sumatra.

Laura Caneira (Spain)

Laura Caneira (1993, Caracas, Venezuela – A Estrada, Galicia) is an illustrator and visual artist whose work dialogues around graphics, territory, and virtual life. After finishing the Degree in Fine Arts (University of Granada, 2015), studying the Master in Illustrated Book and Audiovisual Animation (Universidade de Vigo, 2018), and taking the Deepening Course in Illustration at La Escuela Minúscula (Madrid, 2021), has specialized his work in illustration and graphics. Pixel-art is her main work technique since it allows her to approach a picture’s construction as a game and slow down production time. Recently her piece _For Jesus: neither more, nor less_ has been selected for the collective exhibition in the visual arts contest for Galician emerging artists _Novos Valores_. This digital lace of Camariñas was produced after her residence at _A Casa no Alto_, an artistic residence in Camelle, Galicia. Right now she is involved in the project _Utópicas. Art & Territory_, a collective project about the migration experience in Santiago de Compostela.

Group 2: Blanca Rosa Rasmussen Ruiz de Infante (Spain/Denmark), Sahana Srikanth (India) & Yirou Zhou (China)

Blanca Rosa Rasmussen Ruiz de Infante (Spain/Denmark)

Blanca Rosa Rasmussen is a Spanish / Danish artist based in Beijing.

Born in Beijing (b.1994), Blanca Rosa studied at design at BAU Barcelona School of Design and fine arts at the Leith School of Art in Edinburgh. Besides her full-time artistic practice she is also in her fourth year of study at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA).

Blanca Rosa credits her original style and unique point-of-view to her cross-cultural experiences stemming from her international upbringing. She draws inspiration from the countries and cultures she has explored, adapting elements to create works with subtle yet thoughtful imagery. An artist as well as an activist, Blanca Rosa’s work reflects her passionate views on feminism. She enjoys challenging and playing with our perceptions of topics like gender, race and identity politics. Blanca Rosa explores these topics and creates vibrant, dynamic, colorful paintings in her Beijing studio.

Sahana Srikanth (India)

Sahana Srikanth is a visual art practitioner with a diverse practice ranging from painting, film, photography and text based works. She also works in art management and exhibition support. She has produced a publication called ‘The Pandemic Times’ as part of YCSS, a news-zine on lived experiences during the pandemic for the Young Artist’s Safe Space (‘YCSS’) program by the British Council as part of OSCH (‘Our shared cultural heritage’) in association with the Indian music experience museum. She has written for Art Fervour, an online website for art lovers. Recently she made the book cover for the 2022 sci-fi anthology published by Pagal Canvas Studio. She has also been part of several mural and public art projects. She is the research assistant for a project on Cubbon park by Suresh Jayaram and for an exhibition on the history of Bangalore by Archana Hande.

Yirou Zhou (China)

Yirou Zhou was born in 1996 in Sichuan, China. She graduated from Chinese Traditional Painting at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2019 and then went to study Fine Art Media at Slade School of Fine Art, where she got a Distinction Classification MFA Fine Art(2022). She currently based in the UK.

Yirou’s practice explores aspects of the human condition and existential states of being through the lens of certain dualities: presence/absence, interior/exterior, visibility/invisibility, knowing/not knowing, mind/body; and emotional states shaped by notions of loss, loneliness, emotional and physical fragility and vulnerability. Photography is the baseline of Yirou’s practice, which also includes sounds, video and poetry.

Stop. Look Back. Look Ahead. Proceed., an e-residency for young emerging artists from the music, new media, film, comics, visual arts and photography sectors. With this e-residency culture360 continues to organise virtual capacity building initiatives in response to the impact of the global pandemic. A thematic digital diary presenting the participants' experience and collaborative process will be posted on ASEF culture360's Instagram account on a weekly basis.