Visual Strolls
seasonal residency
Visual Strolls is a residency space for artists who share an affinity for landscapes and wilderness, inner and outer. Foresta is changing with every season as the real forest does. In cyclical circularity it celebrates changing seasons of nature and of our lives. As snow melts away, as days grow longer, as leaves change colour, as they fly with the wind, as stillness settles in, as warmth returns, as birds cross continents — at the turn of each seasonal moment we invite a different artist to bring a new time of the year by creating a portrait of time that later becomes part of the permanent Museum of Seasons.
Winter mini-seasons
In winter ‘Visual Strolls’ at Foresta becomes a space alive with diverse encounters. In the spirit of the entangled pluriversal visions, we invite artists to share seasonal moments they observe and experience across geographies. We are also inspired by the Japanese culture where the understanding of seasons stretches beyond the four times of the year with varying temperature and length of daylight: there are 72 micro-seasons, 72 kō, 72 poetic moments of the year closely observed as things change in the living world around. This winter at Foresta 2 artists from different parts of the globe are sharing their visions of the season.
Winter 2023 Artist in Residence
Fereshteh Najafi
My love for colors and drawing made me become a children's book illustrator. I was born in a country rich in stories, but in turbulent days. I immigrated to Italy in 2008, bringing with me a bag of books that I illustrated, and after seven years living and working in Genoa and Bologna, I came to Brazil in 2015 to live in Curitiba. I love the nature, birds and trees in this city full of colorful flowers in all seasons. Especially the Ipe tree and its yellow flowers announcing spring every year.
Winter 2023 Portrait: The Return of Light
“Winter is always full of surprises for me. I love the season that comes in December. Iranian winters are cold and snowy. When I was a child, schools were always closed due to heavy snow, my classmates and I could happily play in the snow on the street and make snowmen. Winter in Iran begins with the celebration of Yalda Night, an ancient tradition full of joy, poetry and sweetness. Later, when I moved to Italy, winter became a hundred times more beautiful for me. Christmas celebrations and colorful warm lights in the cold weather with snowflakes, alleys and trees that seem to be wearing white clothes have also been added to it. Today I’m living in Brazil, December has become hot and summery, yet another surprise that life gave me as a gift.”
About Visual Strolls
Visual Strolls is not only an online gallery, an exhibition room, a portrait into the work of the invited artist. It is also a part of our long-term research, understanding arts and creativity as forces that change human states of attention in manifold ways, as forms of cognition and perception, divergent perspectives and poetry of vision, access to intuition and imagination, and empowerment for conscious creation of culture. You can read more about Art into Life research here.
Cover image: Fereshteh Najafi