For the past 2 years, Providenza has offered a trans-Mediterranean residency program in partnership with Cherimus and Archipelago Network, Sardinian and Greek artistic organizations. This program enables groups of Mediterranean and international artists to travel from island to island (Greece, Sardinia, and Corsica), engaging with local communities and their territories.
Named "Communities Between Islands," this initiative is supported by Creative Europe and the European Commission.
The second cycle of “Communities Between Islands,” titled “Woven by the Currents,” brings together three artists: an Iraqi musician based in Spain, Dania Shihab, the video artist Sarah-Anaïs Desbenoit (France), and the visual artist Amalia Vargas (Corsica).
Since early May, they have conducted workshops on each of the three islands, inspired by their research on myths, the female figure, ecology, and immigration—themes deeply rooted in the Mediterranean context.
On Friday, June 7, at the Una Volta Cultural Center in Bastia, a closing event for the residency will allow the public to discover the creations born from this journey.
Sarah-Anaïs Desbenoit — Mermaid Symphony, film
Video installation by Sarah-Anaïs Desbenoit in collaboration with the musical work of Dania Paralaxe.
Based on a series of videos shot in DV across the landscapes of Syros, Sardinia, and Corsica, Sarah-Anaïs Desbenoit offers a visual experience built around the musical work of Dania Paralaxe. This experience explores the perception of the speed and rhythm of images on the body.
Amalia Vargas — Écume des flux, visual arts
Drawing on a certain ambiguity between ancient and modern, the three islands that hosted the residency inspired me to imagine a series of sculptures, videos, and photographs incorporating objects found in each territory.
What objects might be common to Syros, Sardinia, and Corsica?
Debris carried by the currents to the shores was my starting point. From one island to another, I collected and transported these persistent objects—replaying the madness of their movements—to confront the viewer with these remnants we generally prefer not to see. Fixed, floating, and enduring, in this body of work, I aimed to put the archaeology of our present in dialogue with the older artifacts and architectures of the islands, raising questions about the future: what perspective for these objects excluded from the social world?
Dania Shihab — object land, sound art
Dania is a musician and exhibition curator. She will present a collection of sounds gathered during her five-week residency across the three islands.
During this period, she compiled field recordings, sampled traditional and immigrant musicians, and collected instruments from three Mediterranean islands with the aim of recontextualizing them to compose a long-duration electroacoustic piece.
She will showcase her work live and, for the first time, collaborate with her fellow resident and filmmaker Sarah-Anaïs Desbenoit in the form of an audiovisual performance.
