SERGE ECKER (LU) & PETRA.PRETA (PT)

In 2020, in the middle of the worldwide pandemic, the team at Kulturfabrik was more determined than ever to support the local art scene and the result was the Squatfabrik: a programme of short artist residencies. Due to the project's great success, it has now become a permanent project in Kufa's calendar and is back for a fourth edition since May 2023. Four artist duos (always composed of a local and a European artist) are in residence at Kufa between May and November 2023. The second artist duo of this fourth edition is Serge Ecker (LU) & Petra.Preta (PT).  Their Get-Out (which takes place at the end of each residency) will be happening on Thursday 28 September 2023, from 6 to 10pm. Serge Ecker (LU) Serge Ecker tries to find symbolic relevance in the most insignificant details, often left unnoticed. The intention to document and capture the world around him, between formalism and the impenetrable aspect of facades and textures, with an approach based on the architectural density and the anthropocene. This reflects in his work, by adopting a contemporary post-digital approach, through technique, composition and visual language. Contrary to a classical documentary approach, his images/projects refuse drama and are detached from their subject and the artist's presence. The subject of urban sprawl, generated transformed landscapes, used, exploited and left by their occupants, offering thus a playground in these transitory zones, the in-betweens. Serge Ecker navigates and translates between handicrafts and improvisation in the spectre of new technologies. Facing the de-valorisation of craftsmanship and work in general, through relocations of production and virtualisation, in an attempt to dethrone the myth of the digital, 3D printing and other contemporary technological vanities. He re-appropiates and synthesises the real and questions its authenticity, sometimes with an intentional cynic tint. What stays of the captured object after its multimedia transfer from the real-virtual-real? An emersion from cyberspace, the post-digital ... Petra.Preta (PT) Transdisciplinary artist, Petra.Preta holds a degree in Theatre-Acting from Superior School of Theatre and Cinema of Lisbon. Her work crosses biographic elements with fiction and myths, in order to question about identity and social problematics and map healing processes.  After her first solo exhibition at CNAD in Cape Verde in 2018, she produced an independent book #MusicasdoMundo (2019) which branched out into an installation entitled Tabanka, from protecting to healing (2021), presented at RuadasGaivotas in Lisbon. In the same year she creates the performance Solo Status, presented at the ATP event curated by the SillySeason collective, which resulted in a series of 9 canvases that became Humor Negro (Black Joy). Black Joy, exhibited at KILOMBO cultural event curated by the Aurora Negra collective and later at the exhibition Intersections at Maat Museum (2022), marks the first piece of a trilogy about freedom and 3 proposals to measure it: joy, rest and love. Manchê Bom (Good Mo(u)rning) (First Draft, TBA, 2022) the second piece appears, a video art that portrays a crossing and proposes an inversion of the path to rescue the right to rest and the act of dreaming.  With a new book soon to be published #AseriesOfProtectiveStyles, shes currently working on the third and final piece of the trilogy that focuses on the subject of love in its different forms, starting by the restauration of loving the Self. In addition to her authorial work, she has collaborated with Artist in different fields, such as Filipa Matta, Conan Osiris, Aurora Negra, Melissa Rodrigues, the most recent being her participation as an actress in the play Pérola Sem Rapariga, staged by Zia Soares, text by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida in a co-production by TNDMII and SO WING. With a body of work composed by drawings, paintings and texts that became books, that became installations, that became performances, the disciplinary crossing serves as a reflection of the intersectionalitys that cross her experience and as a vehicle to transform languages and create safe and empowering imaginaries for black bodies.