ARTIST RESIDENCY: SOUND OF SILENCE
📅 DURATION Long format stays (8-12 weeks). Next slot starting mid/late Aug 2026.
🌍 LOCATION 20 ha Olive Farm near Elvas, Portugal
🧞♂️ WHO CAN APPLY? Visual artists, writers, stage photographers, performance artists, musicians, architects, landscape designers, guerrilla gardeners, or spiritual workers.
🎨 SETTING While you have all the freedom to create your own art, ritual, or performance, you will do so in the solitude of this vast space. Much like a silent retreat; most of the time you will only have the plants and animals to talk to or listen to, especially during the periods when we are not on the farm. Neighbors are within visual and walking distance, so you are not completely isolated.
🏡 SPACE Your will have a 55m² loft-style side building with its own kitchen & bathroom, and a 12m2 studio, both with incredible views. The farm is semi-off-grid but well connected & with great Wi-Fi. Features ancient olive trees, a pool, a pergola, shady arcades and absolute quiet. When i am on the farm, I’d love to share some meals and show you the ins and outs of the farm and the region, but when I am away, you must be comfortable with solitude and the quiet meditation of nature to inspire your work. We will conclude the residency with an event of your choice hosted in the main building: an exhibition, reading, meditation or intimate concert to showcase your work - both in real life and online.
🤝 EXCHANGE This is an unpaid residency with free lodging but self-catered. While you can bring your partner or child, guests have to be announced and approved. As part of the residency and in exchange for the free logding, you will handle light caretaking when I am away, such as feeding the resident cat 🐈, basic pool maintenance 🏊♂️, and keeping an eye on the property to report to me if the neighbors animals have trespassed (horses, goat, sheep) or if some other irregularities occur.
🪂 LOGISTICS Nearest airports: Badajoz/Spain (35 min), or Lisbon/Portugal (2h). If you fly into Badajoz I can pick you up. If you fly into Lisbon, you will have to take the bus to Elvas and I can pick you up at the local bus station. Because we are 6 km from Elvas, this is not walking distance to town. If you don’t have your own car, I will provide a vehicle (bike or farm car) that you can use for the times that I am not there. Minimum knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese is advisable as many people do not speak English here. If you have cat allergies, tend to get hay fever, or similar nature related allergies this residency might not be the right thing for you.
📫 APPLICATION LINK
🌈 RESIDENTS Joanna Asha Bronicki (April - June 2026) Contemporary visual artist who specializes in hyper-realistic drawings using charcoal and graphite. She has won multiple awards. Her works, such as Reborn in Africa and Innocence, have earned honors at the KARTINA MIRA International Competition, the Chianciano Biennale, and the Boynes Artist Award.
ABOUT THE SPACE
In 2021, I stumbled upon a magnificent piece of land that had been neglected for decades: a 20-hectare abandoned olive grove in Portugal that was more jungle than farm. You could not distinguish one tree from the other, the land was so overgrown that the road had vanished and I had to leave my car at the gate and trek 150 meters through the brush just to reach the house. After five years of clearing the wild, rehabilitating the buildings, and with the help of many other people, we have been able to transition this abandoned land and its building to a retreat where rustic charm meets modern comfort including organic olive farming.
This also marked my transition from a city person to a farmer, and it taught me the perverse economics of traditional agriculture: the hidden costs of protecting nature in an economic system that devalues it. While rehabilitating this space, i also finished the third edition of my book Token Economy. Now, after a decade in crypto, i am shifting gears and changing direction—back to my art roots—reimagining the olive tree, not just as a crop, but as a nexus of ecology, economy, and art.
Rumi wrote "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it."
I found that rehabilitating the land was, in many ways, a process of removing those barriers. Out of the quietness of this work, the old has fallen away so the new can emerge. I have named this place Labirinto Eclético—an "Eclectic Labyrinth"—to honor the complex, winding path life can take and the wonderful hidden corners and spaces on this property. And I also dedicated a portion of the estate to an Artist-in-Residency program.
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