Artist in Residence

The Artist in Residence program allows artists to pursue their artistic work outside of their own culture without having to finance their stay. Artists thus have an opportunity to enter into a lively exchange with colleagues from other cultures and to get to know the specificities of the host country. The location of each ‘residence’ gives the participants a common connection, regardless of when they had the chance to spend time at this place to focus on their artistic work. Numerous references in the pieces created on site are assimilated and processed in a different way.

SRI LANKA

The Artist in Residence program in Wathuregama Ahungalla/ Sri Lanka, which exists since 2009, is managed in collaboration between Dr. Ursula Krinzinger and OWF Sri Lanka (Kathrin Messner). The studio in Wathuregama is located on the premises of the one world foundation (owf), a non-profit organization, originally founded in 1995 by Josef Ortner (†) and Kathrin Messner, which has set itself the task of promoting sustainable tourism and, in connection with this, the realization of a school project in Sri Lanka. By paying for their stay, guests of the owf-Bogenvillya guesthouse support the maintenance and operation of the owf free education unit school facilities. After the school grounds were destroyed by a tsunami in 2004, the school was relocated a few kilometers inland and redesigned and built to the highest standards by architect Carl Pruscha. Since 2009, a special studio has been located on the site of the destroyed building, which was opened with a ceremony on January 14, 2010 and has been available to the Krinzinger/Messner AiR project ever since. During the two- to three-month residencies, the invited artists develop projects that are presented in a small exhibition on site at the end of the residency and then brought together in a group exhibition in the Krinzinger Schottenfeld.