Dr Luiz Guilherme Vergara and Dr Jessica Gogan

As part of its Residency Programme, Celadon Center for Arts & Ecologies hosted an eight-day research residency with Dr Luiz Guilherme Vergara and Dr Jessica Gogan from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The residency fostered an exchange between Celadon and two leading initiatives in the field of art and ecology: the Graduate Programme in Contemporary Arts Studies (PPGCA) at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF) and the MESA Institute.

Bringing together curatorial practice, artistic research, environmental humanities, and pedagogy, the residency created a framework for dialogue around ecology, place-based practices, and collaborative forms of knowledge production. During their stay in Kapedes, Vergara and Gogan participated in discussions, site visits, and research activities with members of Celadon, contributing to the development of future collaborations between Cyprus and Brazil.

Extending the residency beyond Celadon’s premises, Dr Luiz Guilherme Vergara delivered a public lecture in the context of the inaugural Kartzin SEA Lab Colloquium, a Visual Voices initiative funded by the Commonwealth Foundation and dedicated to socially engaged art and its role in advancing freedom of expression in Cyprus. Participants to the Colloquium included Dr Evi Tselika, who also gave a lecture, as well as Dr Gabriel Koureas and Constantinos Taliotis, as responders. 

The residency also connected with Celadon’s wider public programme. Dr Jessica Gogan participated in the international symposium Oiko-nomia: Peasant Women, Invisible Others, and Resilience, held as part of the parallel programme of the group exhibition Agropoetics: Soils/Bodies curated by Dr Elena Parpa and hosted at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Dr Luiz Guilherme Vergara is Associate Professor in the Department of Arts at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF), where he coordinates the Graduate Programme in Contemporary Arts Studies (PPGCA) and the research group Y’nterfluxes: Contemporary Arts–Community–Nature. A curator and researcher, he previously served as Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Niterói (MAC Niterói), where he developed projects exploring the relationships between contemporary art, participatory pedagogy, architecture, landscape, and environmental practices.

Dr Jessica Gogan is Director of the MESA Institute and Coordinating Editor of the bilingual platform Revista MESA. She holds a PhD in Art History and was a postdoctoral researcher in the Graduate Programme in Contemporary Arts Studies at the Federal Fluminense University. Her work investigates the intersections of art, clinical practice, pedagogy, and curatorial methodologies beyond exhibition models, with particular attention to publishing as a form of collaborative knowledge production.