In 2023, cE3c hosted its first artist residency, in collaboration with the Plant-Soil Ecology research group and researchers Cristina Cruz and Teresa Dias.
The resident artist will be Evgenia Emets, born in Ukraine and whose life was divided between Moscow and London before arriving in Portugal in 2018. Evgenia is a multidisciplinary artist and poet who is passionate about working with forests, ecology, biodiversity and the community, reflecting this through her visual works, poetry, installations, performance and forest art. Sound, poetry and calligraphy merge in her creations. She seeks to capture spontaneous messages of time and timelessness in her poetry, translated into vocal and visual forms that allow her to articulate a continuous discourse between abstract and concrete languages of visual, sound and natural spaces.
She often works with the voice - always present and accessible - playing with the possibilities and limits of languages. Most of her poems originate graphic scores for real performances. The audience is central to many of her projects: she invites participants into an immersive and often ritualistic space, whether it's a guided art experience in nature, a large-scale installation or inside an art gallery. He is interested in time in the context of cultural perceptions, through the prism of history, philosophy, science and nature.
Her Eternal Forest project is a series of artistic investigations and resolutions that place cultural phenomena and spheres of human and non-human activity in the context of time and nature. The project has existed since he made Portugal his home in 2018, first as an attempt to understand the human factors behind deforestation and the disappearance of biodiverse natural forests, and then with a vision of creating Eternal Forest Sanctuaries through art and community involvement as spaces of deep connection with nature.
With CE3C, Evgenia developed Forest Time - the new edition of Eternal Forest presented in spring and summer 2023.
The programme includes exhibitions, art walks and site-specific experiences in two different spaces: Lisbon's Estufa Fria and Monsanto Forest Park. It also included a number of parallel activities, such as the publication of a new book focusing on the values of nature protection and biodiversity.
- At Estufa Fria, from its Interpretation Centre, seven plants and their ecological, historical, cultural and spiritual significance - both in their place of origin and in their extensive sphere of influence - have been explored. The stories and messages of the plants will be retold by the artist through poetry, a series of calligraphy works on paper and immersive artistic experiences.
- The Monsanto Forest Park Interpretation Centre hosted an exhibition on the themes of the forest as a receiver and transformer of light, the meaning of shadow and light, the role of natural forest biodiversity in human evolution and ecology. A tour of the Biodiversity Space, art experiences and reflection sessions will accompany the exhibition.
