2019 Pernod Ricard Fellows

Patricia Belli, born in Nicaragua in 1964, is a visual artist who uses diverse media, with an emphasis on the crossing of the mechan­ical with the nat­ural to gen­erate mean­ings about bal­ance. Her work is ded­i­cated to exploring the haptic per­cep­tion of the public and from there, reflec­tions linked to sub­jec­tivity, imbal­ance, chaos and har­mony. In 1986, she com­pleted a BA in visual arts at Loyola University of the South, in New Orleans. Ten years later, she obtained a degree in Arts and Letters from UCA, Managua. Patricia Belli sub­se­quently won a Fulbright schol­ar­ship to pursue a Master of Fine Arts at the San Francisco Art Institute, which con­cluded in 2001. Upon returning to Nicaragua in 2001, she founded the Space for Artistic Research and Reflection, EspIRA, an orga­ni­za­tion for the sen­si­tive and crit­ical for­ma­tion of emerging artists which has had a deci­sive influ­ence on the pre­sent and future of the Central American youth. Belli exhibits reg­u­larly in Central America, South America, the United States and Europe. A ret­ro­spec­tive antho­log­ical exhi­bi­tion, by curator Miguel López, has trav­eled to San José, Managua and Guatemala City between 2016 and 2017.

With the aid of Pernod Ricard Fellowship, Patricia Belli will be cre­ating sound sculp­tures, which will explore the idea of social unrest. She aims to convey the crossover of the polit­ical and the psy­cho­log­ical via mechan­ical sys­tems. From hur­ri­cans to rev­o­lu­tions, Patricia Belli will be researching the uni­verse and its laws. Balance, insta­bility, and power will be inves­ti­gated through ceramic sculp­tures and their pre­car­ious move­ment; such move­ments will in turn acti­vate record­ings of doc­u­men­tary sounds. Patricia Belli’s pro­ject is inspired by Nicuaraguan protestors, making up 70% of the pop­u­la­tion, being mas­sacres by the gov­ern­ment for defending their civil lib­er­ties. Her latest work, Desequilibradas, is an instal­la­tion made up of 12 bobo-doll-upside-down-heads on the ground, which, when kicked by the public, return to their orig­inal posi­tion, releasing sounds asso­ci­ated with cur­rent Nicaraguan social unrest. During her stay at Villa Vassilieff – Pernod Ricard Fellowship, Patricia Belli will focus on improving her sound recording and editing skills, as well as mas­tering working with ecofriendly mate­rials, such as ceramics.

Ingela Ihrman, born in 1985, is an artist based in Malmö. She studied at Konstfack, Stockholm and grad­u­ated with an MFA in 2012. Her prac­tice moves freely between per­for­mance art, instal­la­tions, and writing. Costumes and staged sit­u­a­tions are reoc­cur­ring ele­ments in her pre­sen­ta­tions, bringing crea­tures into life while giving birth or blooming. Her work is char­ac­ter­ized by tac­tile craft tech­niques and poetic absur­dism, and bor­rows from ama­teur the­atre, as well as from science. Limiting norms, notions like lone­li­ness and belonging, and rela­tions between dif­ferent life forms are dis­cussed within her work. Ihrman’s recent solo exhi­bi­tions include Varm saft, Kristianstads kon­sthall (2018), The Inner Ocean, der TANK, Institut Kunst, FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel (2017), and Future Flourish at Tensta kon­sthall, Stockholm (2016). She par­tic­i­pated in Omnejd, Lunds kon­sthall (2018), Metemorphoses - let every­thing happen to you, Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2018), the 11th Gwangju Biennale, The Eighth Climate (What does art do?) (2016); The Swamp Biennal, Art Lab Gnesta (2016); Survival K(n)it 7, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga (2015) among others. Ihrman made set design and cos­tume for IMMUNSYSTEMET, a dance per­for­mance by Rosalind Goldberg, Sandra Lolax and Stina Nyberg (2017). She is cur­rently working on a the­atre play with director Maja Salomonsson that will premiere at Ögonblicksteatern in Umeå, autumn 2018.

Ihrman’s pro­ject for the Pernord Ricard’s Fellowship will depart from the artist’s rela­tion­ship with her stomach. During her research, the artist aims to expand her knowl­edge of metabolism, bac­te­rial flora, and the so-called “bowel brain” (the ner­vous system of the intestines). She is par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in the Swedish term “orolig mage” (stomach with agony), which refers to both a wor­rying mind and upset intestines. For her pro­ject, the green algae Ulva intesti­nalis will func­tion as a link between the intestinal flora and the flora of the sea – a slip­pery path back into the water, where the algae hold the ability to bind the sun’s energy. Over time, the sun­light con­verted by the plant meta­mor­phoses into fossil fuels. One of the aims of Ihrman’s pro­ject is to see if the reserves of energy in the stomach can be as highly valued as the layers of crude oil in the inte­rior of the earth. The artist desires to put nature and anatomy in con­ver­sa­tion, exploring the idea of time, light, and algae playing part in forming the soft fat of the stomach, as well as fossil fuels. The artist intends to work with marine biol­o­gists, per­ma­cul­ture spe­cial­ists, as well as with tra­di­tional and alter­na­tive med­ical sci­en­tists.

Mimi Cherono Ng’ok was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1983. Currently based in Nairobi, she studied Photography at the University of Cape Town, grad­u­ating in 2006.Her work explores inti­macy, loss, memory and the sen­ti­mental. Her influ­ences include her good friend Paul Maheke, Dineo Seshee Bopape, and the Muppet show. She loves whales and ele­phants. For the Pernod Ricard Fellowship, Cherono Ng’ok will con­tinue her research on a missing Kenyan stu­dent from the 70s and the gaps pre­sent in his­tor­ical records. In 2017, as a Magnum Foundation grantee, the artist pro­duced a zine based on the stu­dent’s dis­ap­pear­ance, con­taining images sourced from the Mohammed Amin Archive in Nairobi, as well as weather reports, col­lages of old archival images and text; cre­ating a story of absence. For the second chapter of the pro­ject, she wishes to tell the story via writing, cinema and sound. From a script to a sound­track, Cherono Ng’ok aims to pre­pare for the pro­duc­tion of a short film expanding on her research. During her stay in Paris, the artist intends to visit his­tor­ical archives con­taining images and films from dif­ferent coun­tries in the global South for the period of 1971-1979, as well as meeting with artists, his­to­rians, writers and film­makers.

Michelle Wun Ting Wong, born in 1987, is a Researcher at Asia Art Archive based in Hong Kong, inter­ested in the his­tory of recent art in Asia. Her research inter­ests are in his­to­ries of exchange and cir­cu­la­tion through exhi­bi­tions and peri­od­i­cals. Wong holds a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Music, from Wellesley College, Massachusetts, USA and a Mellon Masters of Arts in Art History from Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK. Her pro­jects include the Hong Kong Art History Research Project with the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Ha Bik Chuen Archive Project, the under­grad­uate course devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Fine Arts Department, The University of Hong Kong, and “London, Asia”, a col­lab­o­ra­tive pro­ject with Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Wong is part of “Am­bi­tious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art”, a research pro­gram funded through the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories ini­tia­tive. She was also Assistant Curator for the eleventh edi­tion Gwangju Biennale, South Korea.

Michelle Wun Ting Wong works with ideas around how his­to­ries and nar­ra­tives are con­structed, and how sto­ries are told and retold. She believes that the notion of exchange can chal­lenge the dom­i­nant art his­tor­ical nar­ra­tives, which are often driven by national bor­ders. For the Pernod Ricard Fellowship, Wong will be researching artists, who shared links with Asia and left traces in archives in Paris. The researcher is par­tic­u­larly inter­ested by Marc Vaux’s archive and the archive of Atelier 17. Wong will be col­lab­o­rating with Ming Tiampo, Professor of Art History and Director of the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture at Carleton University in Ottawa, whose work on “Global Asias” is also cen­tred around Atelier 17. Wong also intends to put the archives of a Paris-based pho­tog­ra­pher Marc Vaux (1895-1971) and a Hong Kong-based artist Ha Bik Chuen (1925-2009) into con­ver­sa­tion. The works of both artists are under­going pro­cessing by public insti­tu­tions (by Centre Pompidou and Asia Art Archive respec­tively), and Wong is curious to explore the dif­ferent approaches taken by the insti­tu­tions with regards to access, sharing and own­er­ship.