The sixth cycle of bEam arts residency concerns the work of three creators who were hosted at the space during the same time: two painters and a journalist with a great interest in the artistic possibilities of writing. With different starting points and expressive means, they tell us stories about connections in their works. Connections between the earthly and the transcendental, the “inside” and the “outside”, living creatures and people among themselves. All these stories come together under the title “How We Connect”, a reference to the song of the same name by the Scottish post punk band Dog Faced Hermans.

Louisa Di Felice, originally from Italy and based in Barcelona, approaches landscapes in her work in a paradoxical way. The spaces she perceives visually undergo a process of abstraction and are recorded as painted spaces with symbols that are articulated with each other in multiple variations, creating systems in a way. This approach is directly related to her research work, which concerns the way complex systems operate at different scales, spatial, temporal and informational. In the works she presents in the exhibition, the external landscapes of the city and its surroundings are transformed into flattened circles, arches, “plus” symbols, triangles and straight lines. The landscape undergoes a process of transmutation through her creative gaze and becomes a new space, clearly internal landscape, which despite its clear abstraction retains its multiple levels.

Nicola Hepworth, based in Hackney, London, is a painter whose work draws material from the working condition. How people work shapes their image and ultimately their identity and connection to the rest of the world. Initially, during her residency, she wanted to approach and depict professionals of the city. Before her arrival though, she decided that her work would be a homage to her father, whom she lost during her stay at bEam arts, after a period of illness. His profession was a doctor, in a clinic with prematurely newborn babies. In her works, beyond her personal loss, she elaborates on the image of her father and his connection with the newborns whom he cared for at a very vulnerable stage of their lives. On a second level, she draws inspiration from the iconography of Byzantine tombs and their decorative motifs, rosettes and plant elements, symbols relating to the cycle of life and death, as the present part of her work is imbued with this condition.

Anjali Khosla is a journalist, living and working in New York. She teaches journalism and aesthetics at an academic level. Coming to Thessaloniki, she wanted to write about the natural life that exists in Thessaloniki, in spite of the environmental degradation of the city. Gradually, her writing became a very vivid diary of wandering within the city alongside her dog Bertie and a testimony of the contacts and relationships created during wandering. Relationships with people, cats, repetitive daily actions, the space of the city itself. In the exhibition, the material produced during her stay in Thessaloniki takes the form of a self-published booklet, which is accompanied by a series of scores for urban performances, in the spirit of happenings by Fluxus, as well as the presentation of a video performance.

[...]Mystery lies in the space between/ My tongue gibbers but in your language/ It's a miracle thing/ Godsake/
How we connect/How we connect[...]