photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Jeanne Verdoux / FRA

“I arrived at Joya: AiR with the simple desire of working with nature and was hypnotized by the moonlike clay landscape. I immediately taught myself to process the wild clay to build some small vessels. By day 5, I had decided to build a human size ‘Female Vaisselle’, extending on a sculpture series in progress in my NY studio. It would be the largest sculpture I have build and would be made of wild clay collected and processed by myself. Its form would be based on one of my paintings representing a vessel in the shape of a feminine silhouette. The finished sculpture would be installed on Joya’s grounds. Because it would not be fired, the sculpture would naturally degrade and return to clay dust with time.

This project would require many pounds of wild clay, buckets of saved clean water from my shower, hours of hand building and drying time management. With the invaluable help of my husband, John Gibson, we quickly established a clay production routine. Every morning John would collect pounds of the purest white clay in the dry ‘barranco’, carry it back to the studio and soak it. I would remove stones, dry it in the sun, and wedge it. I would hand build the sculpture using thick coils, compressing them so the base of the vessel would support the weight of the upper part.

Joya’s natural white clay turned out  to be fantastic: smooth, flexible and easy to work with. Wet, it smelled like fresh mud and attracted insects to suck moisture from the sculpture. Dry, it would feel as soft as the human skin. On day 8, I had build the bottom half of the sculpture. It looked like an ugly planter. It was hard work and I felt discouraged at time, particularly when temperatures reached 37 degrees Celsius. But the thick walls of my studio/barn and the long Spanish siestas made it possible. Daily visits and support from Joya’s residents artists kept me going.

I completed the sculpture on day 12. On day 13, it was dry enough for John to move it out of the studio in four separate stacked pieces. We installed it on a field of dry white clay. Visible in the distance from Joya’s farm house, the ‘Grand female vaisselle’ now stands, looking towards the Velez Blanco valley. It merges perfectly into the Andalusian landscape. With time, the unfired sculpture will weather and go back to earth. This process will be documented  by Joya’s curator Simon Beckmann.

Living and working off the grid for two weeks, in a beautiful Andalusian farm house with a 360 degrees view on the sky and mountains, a community of supportive hosts and artists, delicious nutritious meals, and an endless supply of clay, was paradise to me. My time at Joya was a transformative artistic and ecological experience. With the exception of the carbon foot print of my travel to and from Joya, I produced art without using any energy or ressources other than my own body energy (and John’s) and the earth under my feet. I created a totally sustainable sculpture that I left where I made it for others to enjoy. This project will inspire my art practice and have an echo in my future work”.

THANK YOU JOYA, Donna and Simon!

Jeanne Verdoux

photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Yukiko Ogawa / JPN

“Since last year I have been working on my project related to animal bones using photography and drawing, inspired by archaeology, however, I started feeling as if I was not confident of further direction to where my works and research should be developed. Before my residency, I wished to explore the project during my stay, but not exactly sure how. On the first day of my residency, occasionally I found a fragment of animal bones around the residence, which was so inspiring to me, and decided to set a routine of my stay.

During my stay, I had a walk a lot every morning, setting an aim but not so strict- finding animal bones in the natural environment. On walks I started collecting not only animal bones but stones as well. Morning sunlight, sounds of birds, insects, wind, aromatic air, and so on...Walks stimulated all the senses of my body. Whiteness in the environment struck me deeply. Here the soil is white, shining as pure white by sunlight. I found such whiteness even harsionary. Then, I got an idea in my mind to make an all white installation. The residency has a studio where you can work with clay. I gathered natural clay from the soil, mixed water and made a clay which was also white.  Then I made an installation with objects made of clay and found animal bones, and documented it by photography and video. For me, who primarily works with photography, documenting the installation and the environment was not new. What struck me was its processes. By gathering natural clay, making clay, and creating objects and the installation, being conscious of all the making process, the tactileness remained in my body. Having such sense, now I have a better vision of where to move further my project. I also spent time drawing the found bones. Drawing with a slower tempo allows me to analyse and admire their details. I found there nature, the earth, and animals. They are non-humans, but they are living things and our life is among those things.

My residency allowed me to find the making process and the total physical experiences during the entire period. Further I develop my practices by knowing  tactility. 

I appreciate Simon and Donna for taking care of the artists and the great time in my residency. The life in the residency is so creative and inspiring.  Chatting with other inspiring artists, hand-made slow dinner, eating well and sleeping well.. There's nothing superfluous but it's got everything”.

Yukiko Ogawa

Joya: AiR / Ani Lacy / USA

"My residency period at Joya: AiR was incredibly transformative. I spent my mornings walking the landscape, listening and observing, allowing the land to guide my attention. In a place so quiet and remote, I found that the land itself had more to say than I expected and I still feel that it has more to say to whoever is able to listen.

The opportunity created by Donna and Simon through Joya AiR fosters both community, through a carefully selected group of diverse artists; and solitude, through private studios and open schedules. The format of this residency allows for a depth of attention and a slowness of practice rarely possible in everyday life.

Working with local wild clay that I gathered through an ethical and site-sensitive process, I developed a series of unfired clay sculptures intended to interact with environmental elements of wind, rain, and time. This approach treated the land not as a backdrop, but as a collaborator and co-author of artistic labor. 

The work I made at Joya: AiR cannot be reproduced elsewhere. It emerged from a dialogue with this particular place, shaped by impermanence, ecological reciprocity, and a commitment to seeing the land as an active participant in the creative process. I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to be in relationship with both the land and the people of Joya AiR."

Ani Lacy

Ani Lacy is an American artist currently living in the southwest of England. Her practice centers around clay and foraged materials, using site-specific methods to explore themes of migration, Indigenous identity, ecological memory, and place. She holds a Master of Fine Art from Bath School of Art and Design and is currently completing the department’s first-ever practice-based PhD in the History of Art at the University of Bristol.

Her doctoral research seeks to insert colonoware; pottery made by enslaved Indigenous and African peoples during the colonial period, into the art historical canon on its own terms. Both her academic and studio work are informed by Indigenous methodologies, emphasizing embodied knowledge, ecological sensitivity, and the co-creative relationships between people, materials, and landscape.

You can read more about her work at: http://anilacy.com
And about her current curatorial project, Earthbound: Art, Migration, and Material Connections hosted by the Bath Fringe Arts Festival here: https://www.fringeartsbath.co.uk/earthbound

photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Shayna Kowalczyk / GBR

“I got to know Joya: AiR through its 24-hour cycle. I learnt the low blue brightness of morning, when the air was fresh and we could still sit where the light blurred the table. I learnt the sauna heat of midday - bright and blinding - with the cicadas a wall of sound rising from the hills. I became familiar with the cool dark of my studio, with its shutters, and the kitchen, with its high ceilings and the echo of water from the tap which dripped like bells. We were careful not to waste the water. In the late afternoons, I would sleep, in light sheets and under paintings which sometimes I would study for their brush marks. My favourite time to walk was 7pm. I skipped like a goat up and down the empty ravine and watched the white rocks tumbling back towards me. Every footstep was a cloud of chalky white dust and the light was gold and round. I made notes of each of the plants I liked and which ones grew in symbiotic pairs. When I got tired walking, I would find something jutting out the earth to sit on and shake my hair loose and stretch my warm legs out. I only got lost once. I could hear my own breath a lot, and Frida’s great woofs - which reverberated the pines. At nine, no matter what, and wherever we had been, we would congregate on the metal bench to watch the sun’s slow dip between the hills. And then we spent the twilight eating together, almost fresh and cold enough to put a jumper on, talking and talking about everything we had found or thought that day or what we had dreams of finding or thinking tomorrow.

As a poet, my practice is interested in the poetic surreal as a tool for exploring experiences of marginalisation and life in a time of ecological collapse. During my time at Joya: AiR, I enjoyed also exploring a world-building aspect to my practice, using dream-like methods to imagine possible alternative futures”.

Shayna Kowalczyk

Shayna Kowalczyk is a poet and writer from London. Her work has appeared in bath magg, Propel Magazine, and berlin lit, among other publications, and she was shortlisted for the 2025 Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. She is an alumna of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective and a current trustee at Apples and Snakes. Alongside her poetry practice, she works in environmental diplomacy and governance. 

photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Ana Ehlis / ESP

“En el frenesí de vida al que la ciudad nos acostumbra, encontrar un espacio donde el tiempo se mueve al ritmo pausado de la naturaleza es un verdadero regalo. Eso ha sido para mí esta residencia: escuchar el canto de los insectos, oler la tierra y los arbustos, sentir el crujido de las piedras en la arena al caminar, dejarse abrazar por el sol o buscar refugio en casa, restaurada con un gusto exquisito. Una casa que respira naturaleza en cada rincón, con muros de caliza y objetos llenos de historias, acompañados por las obras de Simon y de otros artistas.

Simon y Donna son anfitriones cercanos, atentos y grandes cocineros. Compartir con ellos y con los demás residentes ha sido una experiencia inspiradora. Me ha encantado que cada residente trabajase en algo distinto, pero que el poder compartir y escucharnos realmente nos hace aprender e inspirarnos los unos de los otros.

Ya que mi práctica es a través de la piedra, tuve la suerte de ser acompañada a una cantera de piedra de la zona, permitiéndome tallar materia local, mimetizada. Tallar la piedra a mano es un ejercicio de paciencia y tiempo, y hacerlo en Joya lo convirtió en algo aún más especial. Esta residencia tiene esa energía única: la de un ritmo pausado, el disfrute de las pequeñas cosas y el arte de saborear cada instante”.

Ana Ehlis

Ana se graduó en diseño y, tras explorar el mundo del 2D, se especializó en diseño espacial. Actualmente, tiene un estudio de interiorismo.

Sin embargo, siempre ha explorado las artes visuales, realizando esculturas en cerámica, metal y vidrio desde 2019, cuando se aventuró en la talla en piedra. Desde entonces, ha aprendido de dos grandes esculturas, ambas en Alella y Pietrasanta (Italia), donde pasó dos veranos explorando el mármol de Carrara. Actualmente, tiene su propio estudio donde continúa dedicando tiempo a la escultura en piedra. Ha expuesto estas obras dos veces en Barcelona y Alella, y planea organizar una tercera exposición en septiembre.

photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Yeni Ma / KOR

“I spent my early years in a mountain village, where daily life was deeply intertwined with the rhythms of nature. Each season offered distinct sensory experiences — foraging for wild greens in spring, inhaling the scent of blooming acacia, or hearing the chirping of crickets at night. Over time, as I settled into urban life, those embodied connections to the natural world gradually faded from my daily life.

Amid this quiet sense of disconnection, my time at Joya: AiR became a turning point. The residency offered a rare chance to reconnect — through hands-on observation, sensory attention, and genuine curiosity. It reminded me how meaningful it is to engage with the environment not only intellectually, but physically and intuitively.

At the same time, I was able to further develop Communal Kitchen, an ongoing project series I curate. This project centers around everyday acts related to food — cultivating, naming, cooking, and eating — as a lens through which to reflect on ancestral knowledge, forgotten histories, collapsing ecosystems, and the possibilities of communal life.

During my stay, I walked the surrounding hills daily, sketching wild plants, noting their names, and researching their properties — whether edible, medicinal, or toxic. I sometimes tasted them myself, and shared them with fellow residents. These simple acts — seeing, touching, tasting, naming — helped me think more deeply about embodied knowledge. They also gave deeper grounding to my work, which is rooted in the gestures we make with food and ingredients.

Joya: AiR provided a space where thought didn’t need to be rushed. A place where plants could be encountered not as specimens to be classified, but as beings to be in dialogue with. And where the kitchen could be imagined not simply as a site of preparation, but as a space for gathering, exchange, and unlearning”.

Yeni Ma

https://www.yenima.com/

photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: AIR / Martha Hipley / USA

“I arrived at Joya: AiR after two whirlwind weeks in Lisbon for the Disquiet International Literary Program. I am writing my first novel, and I hoped that I would survive the gauntlet of Disquiet’s fiction workshop with enough spirit to make the most of my time at Joya: AIR for reflection and revising. The combination was perfect. Joya: AiR provided a calm, nourishing space: fresh air and sunshine, long morning runs along the trails and dirt roads, hearty meals with other artists whose own work and concerns about the world felt so aligned with my own. I drafted and revised for hours each day, overflowing with energy and fresh ideas.

My novel, New Work, is inspired by my own experiences as a working artist in Recession-era New York City. Before turning to fiction, I made work as a painter and installation artist, and experimented with mixing traditional media and new technology for over a decade. As a writer, I’m interested in how artists work and survive in economies that are hostile not only to their creativity but to their base human needs. The urban life that is considered essential to a career in the arts — for access to education, patronage, and collaboration — is also often a marginal and violent one. It felt strange and poetic to dive deep on these themes while enjoying the serenity of Joya: AiR.

The novel begins by following a young artist’s assistant whose life spirals out of control when the performative violence of art begins to blur with a real, lived violence in her own hands. At the end of my time at Joya: AiR, I shared a reading of an excerpt from the first chapter:

Lou Best, at one time, made a name for himself by making strange, hulking metal enclosures and beating them with an aluminum baseball bat until he was tired. Now that Lou spent most of his time on the couch or leaning out a window with a cigarette, strung out on pills or whatever else was available when the pills weren’t, Anna would make them herself and then hit them with a bat as best as she could. The kickback of the metal clanging on metal had spun her muscles into ropes over the two years she had worked in Lou’s studio. A certain kind of wealthy person liked to buy the sculptures and put them in their garden or their foyer.

“I’m leaving now,” said Anna. She slipped out of her work jumpsuit and boots and pulled a thin black slip of a dress over her underwear. She kicked on a pair of scuffed ballet flats. She knew by now that Lou was a thousand miles away, stuck in some memory of Midwestern expanses, or whatever bleak thing she would have to type up into an artist’s statement whenever he managed to finish a piece. She also knew that Lou was gay in the special way that only his generation was, and only in the big cities — a kind of pure homosexuality between those before who felt obliged to be straight first and her own generation who felt obliged to sleep with everyone. Part of what she liked about the job was knowing that it was maybe the first job she hadn’t gotten because someone wanted to see her naked.

“I’m leaving now,” she said again. “Do you need anything?” She fished through her canvas bag for her phone and her iPod.

Lou rustled and grunted. His dog, asleep on the cement floor next to the couch, rustled and grunted too. Eventually, the dog would want to piss and would nip at Lou until he took it out and walked it home for dinner. Anna untangled her headphones and picked out a new song, a French band — a new one, the song called “Love in Motion,” but so smeared with synth and distortion it couldn’t be about anything but sex.

“Bye!” she yelled as she opened and then slammed the heavy warehouse door behind her….

Martha Hipley

Martha is a writer and filmmaker from Baltimore, Maryland, living in Mexico City since 2018, working in both English and Spanish. Her fiction blurs the line between the familiar and the strange, where horror, suspense, and humor converge, and mundane details blend seamlessly with the fantastical. Through horror and suspense, she explores how identities shift under societal pressures—how bodies mutate, resist, and decay. Humor plays a crucial role in her work, creating space to confront the uncomfortable truths and violences of everyday life.

photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: AIR / Isabel Urbina Peña / VEN

“I’m Venezuelan artist and designer based in Brooklyn, N.Y. I’m fascinated by communication that transcends language, intrigued by the role of the written word in our modern world, and by how since the beginning we have tried to leave a mark as proof of our fleeting existence. 

With my work, I explore how to depart from the inherent meaning attached to letterforms by way of abstraction, while still preserving the calligraphic and handwritten quality of mark making and expression—a language without letters, and the possibilities of communicating through drawing. 

Joya: AIR provided a calm space to reflect on this subject. Early in the morning, I’d take a hike through the grounds, giving myself time for introspection and observation. These walks allowed me to notice the physical structures and fences in the surroundings of the house that later informed my woven works visually. I began each session in the studio with ink drawings and making paper by hand, using Risograph prints of my own drawings. The secluded nature of the residency determined how I approached the paper-making process as I had very basic tools available (a coffee can, a fork, and a laundry bag served as my tools). The results were rough and rustic in nature, but these experiments helped me think deeper about consistency, texture, and color. These terrazo-like collages containing my own drawings quickly filled up my walls at the studio. The biggest portion of my day was spent further developing my series of paper weavings, which slowly took dimension and organically turned into hanging sculptural structures, that related with the studio space and surroundings. 

To close each day during the two weeks, I would join the rest of the artists for communal dinners, discussions around our futures as artists, and how could we each develop our work further while trying to catch estrellas fugaces in the starry night above us.

I spent a lot of time thinking and discussing how I’d like my work to evolve in the next year or so, which materials and techniques could make sense for my work to move towards, and how to continue developing my practice. It was an incredibly enriching experience that has invigorated my practice and pushed my work in ways I couldn’t have imagined at home. Gracias Simon & Donna for giving me the opportunity experience Joya: AiR and share my work with fellow artists”.

–

Isabel Urbina Peña

Design, Type & Lettering

@bellera

www.isabelurbinapena.com

photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: PDP / Esme Badham / GBR

“How grateful I am to have had the opportunity to spend three amazing weeks participating in the Joya: Air graduate/undergraduate Personal and Professional Development program. What an incredible place Simon and Donna have built to share with and welcome artists from all over the world. As my first time at a residency this has been an eye opening and inspiring experience for me as I go forward into my third year of BA Fine Art and Art History at Goldsmiths University London.

I have been energised by the other artists at Joya: AiR, and have created close bonds, through the sharing of walks, studio visits, meals, presentations and mutual creative passions.

In my free time I have had the chance to share and reflect on my own practise as an artist, which is heading in the direction of sculpture and body armour, combining traditional metalwork techniques with modern notions of seduction and beauty, as I aim to attach bodily immediacy to the works.

Walking, hiking (and occasionally sleeping outside!) in the beautiful landscape has allowed me to develop a more considered practise of thinking, writing and reflecting. I hope to continue to return to Joya: AiR as it combines the amazing elements of an unparalleled landscape, continually fascinating people and artists, and the kindest and most dedicated hosts”.

Esme Badham

photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Tom Nutting / GBR

“With my project an ecopoetic investigation into forest die-back, arriving during a heatwave felt appropriate, and I came to cherish the slightest breeze, the cooler hush of the house’s interior, and twilight dinners alfresco. It was hard to imagine the riverbeds once brimming with water. Though the hills are veined with dead pine, fruit trees still radiate outward from Joya: AiR, and learning about Simon and Donna’s water restoration project was both moving and inspiring.

Initially, I arrived thinking about poetic form — particularly Mary Ellen Solt’s concrete poetry — but the act of gathering clay from the barranco, collecting seeds from dead trees, and working with raw earth gradually shifted my approach. The sensory began to lead: texture, ache, scent, heat, the rhythms of cicadas and birdsong. Through body and place, I found myself connecting to grief and impermanence, while exploring how celebration might still be possible amid loss.

Equally essential was the community of artists — generous in both spirit and skill — whose practices and reflections opened rich conversations about slowness, care, and ritual. I’m especially grateful to Kelli and Philippe whose thoughts and practical expertise enriched my work.

And on a practical note: as a vegan in Spain, I especially appreciated the thoughtful, delicious food!

I’d recommend Joya: AIR to anyone seeking time away from the rhythms of daily life — to reconnect with land, with other artists, and with their own creative practice”.

Tom Nutting

Tom Nutting (he/they) is a writer and psychiatrist from Bristol, currently reading for a master’s in creative writing at Oxford University. His writing focusses on mental health and medical humanities, on nature and environmental damage, and on queerness. He has been shortlisted for the Starkie poetry prize and won the Lisa Thomas poetry prize. His poetry and prose have been published in Magma, The Hopper, Blue Bottle Journal, BJPsych, ORB, The Ash. As an NHS doctor, he supports people with severe mental illness, is conducting research into nature-based care, and also volunteers with Medical Justice.

photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Liz Harrington / GBR

“My residency at Joya: AiR came at the perfect time, having just completed the first year of my MFA at the Slade in London – a chance for a complete change of scene(ry), and time to rest and reflect on the last few months. I had spent much of my year working indoors, and in a darkroom, creating imaginary landscapes - so I was looking forward to trading this, and a hectic, city environment, with the outdoors, being in nature and the wide, open expanse of this dry, Andalucian landscape. Water is a big presence in my predominantly photographic based work – in the process of making, as well as often subject matter, and I was curious to see what would evolve being in this arid landscape.

The first few days were spent resting, reading, writing and taking beautiful walks along the dry barranca (as a former geographer I’m slightly obsessed by river and erosional channels). The sounds of insects, crickets and birds also really struck me and I started to make some field recordings, as well as several short videos of light and shadow at play.

On walks I found that I started collecting stones and small rocks that reminded me of miniature landscapes. Isolating them from their environment I made photograms using the early photographic process of cyanotype. These were subsequently toned in wild rosemary, which was in abundance, changing the print colour from a deep blue to light brown to mirror the dominant colour of the landscape. I also made some pinhole photographs and used a toy camera to take images on expired film. Being conscious of water usage I used the waste wash water from the cyanotype prints and the rosemary toner along with other household materials (ascorbic acid and sodium carbonate) to make a plant based photographic developer.

Inspired and encouraged by fellow artists (thank you!) I spent a morning sketching (first time since school), using some found charcoal and twigs to make simple drawing implements. I also wanted to return to a rock face on the barranco to make some rubbings with the charcoal. These were then put back into the same landscape and performative recordings were made as the paper shifted, fell, and danced in the wind.

Simon and Donna have created a truly special place at Joya: AiR, underpinned by a great ethos, and I know my time here will continue to feed into my practice as my work develops. It was also great being amongst such an inspiring group of other artists – the chats, laughter, walks, dinners, music, drinks, watching the sunset….Thank you.

Instagram @_lizharrington
Website lizharrington.com

photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Kate Terry / USA

"I felt like I became a child again at Joya: AiR. I ran through the meadows, played in the grass, and laughed with my electric, imaginative friends. It was like realizing I’d spent my whole life speaking another language--and found there are other people who speak it, too.

After an intense first year in my Master of Landscape Architecture program, I arrived needing room to breathe, to observe, and to reconnect with my work without the pressure of deadlines. The work I did at Joya will carry through not just in my artistic practice, but in the art of designing outdoor spaces that people occupy.

Much of my time was spent studying the native plants of the region. I was drawn to their sculptural qualities--how their structure alone could define space, cast shadow, and shape the experience of a place. With no agenda beyond curiosity, I used the plants themselves as tools for observation, exploring how line, mass, and texture move through the landscape. This deepened my interest in how plants function--not only to hold the ground and support life, but experientially--how they create atmosphere and engage our senses.

Beyond the studio, I found inspiration in the presence and generosity of the other artists. Nights unfolded over dinners on the patio, then wine on the back bench, where we watched sunsets we never wanted to end and traded 'who’s' with the neighboring owls.

It was a magical two weeks that left me with new clarity about my direction, and infinite gratitude for the creative community I found."

- Kate Terry

Kate is an emerging visual artist and landscape architecture graduate student exploring the intersection of environment, memory, and time. Her work centers of observational drawing and painting, focusing on ephemeral experiences. She is influenced by abstract expressionism and the works of landscape architect James Corner. With a background including global travel and a previous career in tech, she brings a multifaceted lens to her creative process, which is grounded in field work (studying plant ecologies and site histories).

photo Simón Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Jo Bertini / AUS

“Joya: AiR is a unique and ambitious project, a lifetime commitment to art and environment by artists, for artists. This beautiful, remote, arid property is a model for sustainable artistic and ecological practice, intelligent, ambitious and a working testament to providing a supportive, inclusive, well curated community. There is no pressure to produce or perform. The surrounding natural landscape is an endless font of creative  possibility and inspiration. I was as much surprised by the familiar as the unfamiliar. This ancient arid landscape is full of the unexpected, opportunities and gifts. I was so grateful for the immersive learning experience Joya: AiR provided, revealing so much about Spanish human history, ecology and this unique European 'Natural Park'.

In the light of an increasingly demanding, globalised world, where the  importance of curiosity and staying true to oneself as an artist becomes eroded, distracted and underestimated, the value of Joya: AiR and the significant experience it offers is even more rare and precious. Time at Joya: AiR is a true artistic respite and a moment of stillness,  where one can simply be ones' creative self. Both Donna & Simon are a resource themselves of well researched knowledge and experience on art, environment, flora & fauna, contemporary sustainable design and engineering. Joya: AiR provides an invaluable opportunity to meet, connect with and learn from a like-minded, varied cohort of international artistic practitioners and potential lifelong friends. 

Joya: AIR is a sanctuary for creative, artistic souls and those sensitive to environmental concerns and the natural world. Long may it flourish and prosper.”

Jo Bertini

Jo Bertini lives and works between the deserts of New Mexico and the arid lands of Australia. Her artworks incorporate landscape, portrait painting, science, ecology, history and cultural heritage, informed by working with indigenous communities living in arid, isolated regions.
An established, awarded Australian artist, renowned lecturer and teacher, Jo has 40 years exhibiting experience. She was a recipient of an ‘0-1 Extraordinary Ability’ Visa and currently working on projects in the American Southwest. She has had two recent, solo, US museum exhibitions, ‘Deep in Land,’ at the Galleries of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado in 2022 and ‘Mountain of the Watchful Heart’ at the historic Blumenschein Museum in Taos, New Mexico in 2023.
For ten years Jo worked as Australia’s first female Expedition Artist with Australian Desert Expeditions, a research-based trekking outfitter that uses camels to carry the burden of food, water and equipment to guide scientists on environmental research in the most remote desert regions of Australia. She has contributed to many scientific publications and museum archives.
Jo’s paintings have been curated in hundreds of group exhibitions, exhibited as final ist in numerous art awards, winning many prizes. She has been awarded solo museum, gallery and touring exhibitions throughout Australia, India, Malaysia, China and the Unit ed States, as well as awarded public commissions, grants and residencies. She has been awarded international residencies in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Colorado, USA and Indian Government sponsored residencies in India.

photo Simon Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Berin Golonu / USA-TUR

“The quiet, oxygen-rich environment of the Joya: AiR residency, its natural beauty, and the warmth of its sun, as well as its hosts, provided the clarity I needed to make progress on my book. As I write about Istanbul’s historical green spaces, I have come across accounts of the exotic species that the Ottoman Sultanate imported into their gardens from across the world. One of these accounts describes the cultivation of the cork oak (Quercus suber), which is native to some of the countries of the Western Mediterranean, including Algeria, Tunisia, Italy, France, Portugal and Spain. Even though the tree is not native to Istanbul or Anatolia, there were efforts to cultivate it as a forestry product when the Ottoman Empire was trying to develop a beverage and wine industry in the late nineteenth century. The cork oak has the distinction of offering harvests of this lucrative forestry product without sacrificing the life of the tree. The cork that is stripped from the trunk regenerates every nine years, and the trees can live to be 200 or even 300 years old, providing dozens of harvests.

Before going in search of the extant cork oak trees in Türkiye, I decided to come to Spain to observe these species in their native habitat. Spain contains cork oak forests as well as cultivated groves referred to as dehesas. I was able to visit a dehesa called Haza de Lino, which was about a two-hour drive away from the Joya: AiR residency. This was the highest altitude cork oak grove in the world and it, too, had been planted in the nineteenth century. The Quercus suber groves shared the hills of this region with a complementary plant, the grape vine. At the local bodega, we sampled the delicious Haza de Lino wine, which, of course, sources both the grapes and the cork locally.

At Joya: AiR, I further researched the status of Quercus suber production in Türkiye to learn that the first Quercus suber saplings sent to Istanbul had been a diplomatic gift from the king of Spain to the Ottoman Sultan. Although cork oak production never took off during the Ottoman Empire, some of the saplings sent from Spain were planted on the Sultan’s farm in the Aydın province. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the seeds from these original saplings were collected and planted in a managed grove in Izmir, which now contains tens of thousands of trees. It may have taken close to a century to realize the vision of developing a locally grown cork industry in Türkiye, but the King of Spain’s gift of diplomacy did eventually bear fruit. I encountered one last surprise as I shared this information during the presentation I gave to the other residents at Joya: AiR. At the end of my talk, Simon brought out a giant piece of harvested cork that he’d kept as a souvenir from a childhood road trip that he and his family had taken to Corsica, where they happened upon a Quercus suber harvest”.

Berin Golonu

Berin Golonu is an art historian, critic and curator from Istanbul, and now teaching at the University at Buffalo. Her research and teaching focus is on urban ecologies, spatial practices, landscape imagery and trade networks in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. Her first monograph, titled Naturalizing Modernization, Urban Greenspace and Cultural Memory in Late Ottoman Istanbul, traces changing concepts of urban public space in the Ottoman capital during the long nineteenth century, and draws connections with the uses of historical greenspaces today. Sections of this research have been published in the edited volume Commoning the City: Empirical Perspectives on Urban Ecology, Economics and Ethics (Routledge, 2020) and Infrastructures and Society in (Post) Ottoman Geographies (Forum Transregionale Studien, 2021). Golonu’s research articles and art criticism have appeared in Third Text, Journal of Visual Culture, Artforum, Art in America, X-Tra, Modern Painters and frieze. Along with Candice Hopkins and Marisa Jahn, she is the co-editor of the volume Recipes for an Encounter (Western Front Editions, 2010). From 2003-2008, Golonu served as a curator at YBCA in San Francisco. Recent fellowship awards include the Getty/ACLS Fellowship in the History of Art; an American Research Institute in Turkey/NEH Fellowship, and a Leibniz Fellowship for Historical Authenticity.

photo Simon Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Kritha Makwana / IND

"My time at Joya:Air was truly special.

The day I arrived, I could join other artists for a walk in the barranco and it felt like a significant occurring because the barranco, to me, was the most magical space there. The arrival into the core of the barranca feels like entering into a sacred space, you reach its core by engaging through different senses one after the other. I remember the lingering fragrances of wild lavender, pine resins, a citrus yet sweet note flower as I walked in, then silence started setting in along with visual cues of the imagination of water in the ravine. The filtered light guided me to one pocket in the area that I imagine to be the sacred container that holds the flow here. The rosemary and sage fragrances bring you back into the living spaces from the barranco. 

This experience guided my work for the 2 weeks I was there. The work imagines a glistening flow-matter as the Infinite Source in the Barranco, that emerges by way of the ever shifting folds and layers, extending onto our bodies in the form of jewellery and transcending deep into the veinal network of our internal Barranco.

Donna and Simon have created this space with a lot of reverence for the landscape, and for the Cortijada’s story. It was lovely to hear their stories from India and other conversations which were also very insightful for me. There is something very pure about the place they have created which maybe difficult to explain. The beauty of the landscape spills into the living and studio spaces as constant reminders. The connections and conversations with other artists was also a big highlight for me as this was my first residency and the presentation I made before leaving gave me a great retrospective into my work and with discussions I could find areas to reflect on and also put more effort into.

I have a strong feeling that my experience at Joya: AiR has layers that will be revealed to me in the coming months."

Kritha Makwana

Kritha is a jewellery artist based out of Goa, India. She graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from CEPT University. Her interest in making accessories began in 2013 when she made a few accessories from mild-steel hardwares, which helped express herself behind an otherwise shy personality. Having experienced the subtle power of jewellery in the deep layers of her own being, she launched her eponymous label in 2015. Through the medium of metal she could connect to her lineage of carpenters and metal-smiths (called the 'Luhar-Suthar' people in Gujarat) and she feels that working with metals (not necesarrily jewellery) comes to her in a deeper way. She is currently experimenting with larger pieces beyond the human-scale of jewellery pieces.

www.krithaa.com

photo Simon Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Tess Sheerin / NZL

“E kore au e ngaro, he kakano ahau i ruia mai i Rangiatea. I can never be lost, I am a seed sown from Rangiatea.

Travel has always held deep meaning for me, as has my connection to Aotearoa, New Zealand. My mahi (work) blends art, environmental change, and education. Raising awareness of pollution, well-being and wildlife conservation through creativity.

After a vibrant week in Madrid absorbing art, including photoESPAÑA, I arrived at Joya: arte + ecología / AiR, hoping to carry forward that creative spark. In the studio, I’ve been developing mixed media works exploring the four elements, tierra, aire, agua, fuego, through collected materials like blanco clay, compost, bubbles play, watercolour and candle flame. This has pushed my practice into fresh, exciting directions.

The experience here has been truly inspiring. Simon and Donna’s generosity and wisdom have been invaluable. Living with artists from around the world has opened my eyes to diverse creative approaches, yet shared values unite us.

These 2D works complement my ‘Elemental’ sculpture series, developed in Aotearoa, which portrays the elements as atua-like deities characters. Viewers are invited to see themselves as the potential fifth element.

The concept began with a simple line drawing to capture the quiet space between thoughts during meditation. With the help of skilled collaborators and a mix of mechanical and digital processes, the work evolved into something beautifully unexpected. Using stainless steel, a durable, sustainable material, ‘Elemental’ encourages reflection on our relationship with the natural world and action toward a greener future.

My connection with the sky has been reignited here. Sunrise and sunset, with their apricot hues, bookend each day. Thunderstorms and dramatic cloudscapes have offered rich, atmospheric backdrops for photographing the sculptures. The desert environment, hot, raw, and unlike anything I’ve known, has shaped every moment.

Frida the giant schnauzer and Fufu the goat bring joy. There are bugs, birds, snails and a visiting grass snake. Though at times I feel a mix of anxiety and exhilaration, I remain deeply grateful for this opportunity and for the support from those back home who helped make it possible.

Joya: AiR’s mission to engage with climate change and sustainability through education, research, and activism resonates deeply with me. It has truly been an honour to be part of this”.

Tess Sheerin tesssheerin.com

photo Simon Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Matka Collective / Poland

“We are a group of visual artists, mainly working with photography, researchers, visual educators, and cultural animators. We believe that collective work allows us to expand our artistic and research interests and to disrupt each other from the well-worn paths of our individual actions in the field of art. Our paths of action have intersected multiple times, in various projects – both artistic work and festivals and exhibitions organized by individual members of the collective. We first got to work together as a trio at Joya arte + ecología / AiR. For two weeks, we worked on the “Ephemeral Stream” project. Its premise was returning to the complexity of the relationship between humans & space. The result of our work will be a self-published book.  

“Ephemeral Stream” is a complex, multi-step research-visual narrative conducted in collaboration with and within the local space. It consists of research work, spatial activities, and the creation of an artistic anti-guidebook/guide/atlas of actions with and for the land”.

left to right:

Katarzyna Zolich, PhD (1983)

Visual researcher, photographer and educator. Graduated from the Academy of Photography (Krakow, 2014) and Cultural Studies at Jagiellonian University (2009). Awarded scholarships from Young Artists Cooperative (2013), Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2014 and 2019) in order to finish a photobook 'The Catalogue on Invisible Places' and create 'Male naklady', also a scholarschip from President of the city of Bielsko-Biala (2015) and Instytut im. W.Felczaka (2020). In 2017 she has participated in the Residence programme at Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest (Hungary) and gained a scholarship at the UGR in Granada (Spain). Chosen to Debuts 2014 - a bookgathering 36 most talented, young polish photographers. Published her first photobook Vivir en Valparaiso with Ciengramos (2018, Granada, Spain).

Co-author of the children's book: Oh Buu - on the Trail of Feelings.She exhibited her works in Poland and abroad. She is a part of Paper Beats Rock Foundation which is a collective of educators in the field of Zine culture. Interested in people, power and symbolic violence. Zine and photobooks enthusiast.

Founder of @Malenaklady/ Small editions - an on-line library of self- publishing featuring books from Poland and Hungary. Co-curator of Paperlust Photobook Fest (2019, Krakow), and Coexistence workshops (2020, Bielsko-Biala), Art-bibuła. Zines Festival (2021) and No Borders Exhibition Award (2021 and 2024).

https://vimeo.com/malenaklady

https://malenaklady.org/

Anka Sielska (b. 1978 in Katowice, Poland) –

Photographer, animator of culture (president of Culture of Image Foundation). Graduate of the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava (Czech Republic) and Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice (Poland), where she conducts classes in narration in photography and photo books edition. She works with private stories, amateur photographs and mementos from photo shops. Anka Sielska also deals with artistic photography and co-implements multimedia projects. She holds scholarships of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Marshal of Silesian Voivodeship.

www.ankasielska.com

www.en.kulturaobrazu.org

Barbara Kubska

As a visual artist, I work mainly with the medium of photography. I am interested in multithreading stories, archives and collections. Using photography, I study their contexts and meanings. I employ the retrospective, hierarchization, seek new dependencies and connections. With the Culture of Image Foundation, I am involved in its social and popularising cultural activity. I am employed as an assistant of the Photography Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Katowice. My works have been presented at solo exhibitions: “Sploty. Fotografie polskich strojów ludowych” (Weaves. Polish Folk Costumes) in Photographs at the Tychy City Museum, “Zabijam czas, nimczas zabije mnie” (I’m Killing Time Before It Kills Me) at the gallery of the Culture of Image Foundation in Katowice and the “Nowe Miejsce” gallery in Warsaw. I have participated in numerous group exhibitions, including: “Serce Wyspy” (The Heart of the Island) at the BWA Gallery of Contemporary Art in Olsztyn and “Milczenie Dźwięków”(The Silence of the Sounds) at the Wrocław Contemporary Museum. My works were presented at the Joanna Helander exhibition “Baby patrzą” (Ladies Looking) during the 2019 Photo Month in Kraków.

barbarakubska.com

photo Simon Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Fionnuala Kavanagh / UK

“I always feel totally inspired and fully myself when I am at Joya: AiR. This was my third visit. When I first came as a volunteer in 2017, I had never been to an artist residency before and did not consider myself a writer. Now two books and a load of residencies later, it felt great to return to the place it all started. The full immersion in nature, epicness of the stars, and the warmth of Donna and Simon, invite you to open up, form really beautiful bonds with a small group of strangers, and to take a step towards yourself.

My work is about social issues, and pretty knarly ones at that. It was very beneficial to my practice to exit society for a bit and reach a place of calm where I could properly think.

I had the chance to share my new essay collection, CTRL ALT RIGHT DELETE, which looks at why young people are being radicalised by the far right. Here’s part of the reading I gave to the very supportive group of artists:

“I used to understand the world through simple heroes' narratives. Red Goodies vs. Blue Baddies. The Goodies boycott brands. Donate. Recycle. The Baddies, well, the Baddies love capitalism and hate immigrants and women. The Goodies and Baddies don’t really mix. Maybe once a year at a Christmas dinner table. State schools. At the polling station. In the line at Lidl. But mainly they remain separate, one group existing for the other only in their mind, their antithesis, formed for the purpose of strengthening their own sense of identity, their personal narrative.

(...)

Dating the hero of the Goodies, who waved his big red flag in one hand whilst dropping his litter on the living room floor for me to pick up with the other, parallel to my brother turning far darker than even a Tory Blue Baddie, mixed up everything I knew into a deeply bruised purple.

(…)

On the face of it, the Goodies and Baddies’ content differs – one group fashions their warrior mask from Guardian and New Yorker clippings and the other from 4Chan threads, but structurally, they are quite the same. When you find yourself in close relationships with both Goodies and Baddies, you see that on both sides, under those simple hero stories, there are complex emotional truths that can’t be easily summed up into shiny little soundbites, or by knuckle tattoos. Just like ‘HATE’, ‘LOVE’ too knows how to deliver a punch.”

Fionnuala Kavanagh

https://www.fionnualakavanagh.com/

https://ikeepmyshadowlight.substack.com/about

photo Simon Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Gill Ord / UK

I’m a returner so I know Joya in some way but I noticed memory can make things slightly shift, it can reshape and the familiar has a sheen of newness, of rediscovery.

I had some ideas about this residency, planning ahead to work with my fellow artist Kay Walsh. It would involve us walking together, (so getting lost with someone) talking and gathering things along the way that could hold memory. We realised that repetition was part of the experience, noticing the variety in the landscape at different altitudes.

What luck to be there for the wild flowers, astonishing fields of yellow, magenta and wild rocket everywhere. Kay and I worked on a drawing together, each of us bringing elements that chimed for us and it built into a work that was a record, but also held the rhythm of the walks.

I also worked in my studio more directly from the surrounding landscape and from memory of the walks, I picked up sticks and these became my drawing tools, capturing the drama, the shifts and changes in light and weather, trying to take it all in and bring it to the work. I find peace here and that the air quality calms the mind, the days are long.

The unexpected delights of reading a part in a play, drinking healing herbal tea and a soothing clay face mask. The delicious food but also the well honed humour of Donna and Simon as they facilitate all the workings, they do so with such absolute grace. Joya is an incredible achievement and I am very grateful for the enriching time I’ve just had here. Processing the work I made will take time, but I feel that is the nature of Joya, it will and has provided fuel for the studio for years  to come”.

Gill Ord

photo Simon Beckmann

Joya: AiR / Kay Walsh / NZ

“Returning to Joya: AiR in Spring cast a different light and view onto a now remembered landscape. The ground cover of wild flowers circling the house and beyond softened the terrain and covered the cracked clay. Sways of purple and yellow meadows spread across the immediate landscape and beyond.

It felt familiar but different from my previous visit. 

I was excited to be back at Joya and to spend time outside in the landscape when the heat was less imposing.

Daily walks traversing the immediate high points was a focus for a collaborative piece of work with fellow artist Gill Ord. Conversations, impressions and objects collected on these walks became the starting point of a drawing in response to these meanderings. 

I also wanted to use the time to try out some new ideas and ways of working related to my current research into rewilding here in the UK. Having the time and space to experiment was invaluable and will inform how the work evolves now back home.

Thankyou to the fellow artist and writers who shared their practise generously.

Evenings were spend immersed in performance, reading a part from a developing play, applying face masks sourced from the surrounding barranco along with many conversations and  amazing food.

Thank you Donna and Simon for your care and kindness in creating a truely inspired place to explore, create and just be, far away from the usual distractions of daily life”.

Kay Walsh