Our Residencies – Artist-in-Residence Programs
General Information

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Our unique International Artist-in-Residence Programs offer competitive professional and academic opportunities for emerging, mid-career, and late-career national and international artists, designers, curators, art historians, art educators, academics, writers, journalists, researchers, and graduate students age 20 and over.
 
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Arquetopia’s distinctive residency programs are an international reference for social creativity, artistic research, and sustainability in the arts, and due to its longevity, Arquetopia's programs have become a model for many residencies around the world. We are invested in providing an inclusive experience where research and critical thinking can be come a generous space to rethink studio practices, and where all ideological preconceptions including gender, race, class, and age are constantly being challenged.

Arquetopia is distinguished worldwide for its autonomous and sustainable residency model which is constantly in flux, offering unique learning opportunities through multiple residency programs with substantial content anchored in local knowledge, artistic research, and critical academic perspectives; thus,our residency spaces function exclusively for productive art professionals, writers, historians and researchers, offering individualized programs with mentoring and project support by our directorial/curatorial staff. Through the years, Arquetopia Foundation has raised the bar worldwide in the residency field, by putting the value of reciprocity at the forefront of every relationship with the environment, our residents and staff, and the diverse communities connected to our programs. The range of contents and artistic techniques offered through our artist residency programs are rooted in local knowledge; the different models of resistance found in Mexico, Peru and Italy; and the preeminent question of ethics. We provide exceptional life-changing opportunities where artistic practices become a space and time for experimentation and learning. 

Our residency programs are based on a non-exploitative, in-flux model promoting social consciousness; thus, they include a criticaland academic component that makes them very porpous and dynamic, allowing them to incorporate multiple dialogues and themes that intersect the reflective nature of the residency experience with the studio practice. All residents are strongly encouraged to question all dominant forms of knowledge, including tourism, art history, and visual culture in general; and to expand their studio practices by engaging in critical discussions. All of our residency programs are process-oriented, autonomous and with a critical approach to studio practices and artistic research with an exmphasis on project-based learning.

Our staff and international board of directors have designed a dynamic curriculum responding to each one of our residency programs, and that facilitates a critical dialogue between the resident’s practice and the context encountered. Arquetopia facilitates this process with individualized mentoring, discussion, critique, and a critical bibliography that are tailored to each artist and writer’s needs. All programs include critical essays written by diverse scholars which serve as an introduction to our mission and the complexity of Mexico, Peru, or Italy. Since all of our residencies are customized, each resident gets their own set of individualized readings addressing their questions and responding to their artistic practice while presenting different methodological possibilities facilitated by our curatorial staff. In the hope of extending these critical discussions to other communities, our ultimate goal is for each resident to develop new methodologies, by questioning notions of “history” and “place” and allowing new possibilities within their practice to emerge in time and space.

With more than 14 years of experience in the artist residency field, our programming keeps growing and our model continues to be in flux, as an open process of learning and constantly adapting to new global challenges. In that sense, social creativity allows the expansion of critical conversations on specific themes while questioning art history and visual culture. Each separate program based in Puebla and Oaxaca, Mexico; Cusco, Peru; and Naples, Italy, is dynamicin addressing specific themes and techniques through artistic research resonating with diverse studio practices.

Every year through our professional residency programs, we host approximately 100 to 150 visual artists, designers, art historians, curators and scholars, now having come from 110 countries around the world, with a wide range of ages and practices, enriching and expanding our transnational artistic dialogues. As an in-flux model, Arquetopia has become an important hub for ideas, exchanges, and encounters through the arts, reaching out to diverse artistic and academic circles; thus, our unique, competitive artist residencies offer the flexibility to address multiple themes in short periods of time, at the intersection of unique studio practices, while engaging with critical perspectives and adapting the process of learning to the new reality of traveling without forgoing content or the uniqueness of the experience.

All of our programs explore the complex intersection between art, visual culture and social justice as forms of discourse by addressing the practice of ideology, including race, class, gender, and nationality, while also focusing on alternative epistemologies and non-exploitative practices. In each program offered, Arquetopia provides the possibility to expand each unique artistic practice through research and local knowledge while also addressing central questions to confront official history. Departing from the problematic ties among the European Renaissance, Colonialism, and the long memory of Imperialism within the context of Mexico, Peru and Italy, these new thematic artist residencies challenge dominant narratives while also providing the space and time to learn and explore creative practices. Each program provides unique critical content bringing important ethical questions into our present to enrich the process of artistic learning with multiple nuances.
What to Expect during a Residency at Arquetopia

Arquetopia’s programs initially began in 2009 with a traditional artist-in-residence format. Throughout the years since, and with the vision and commitment of our staff and the support of our Board, our programs became a unique and life-changing experience based on reciprocity, knowledge, and critical investigation for everyone involved. All of our programs are process-based, not product-based, and we have carefully structured them as the space/time for artists, writers, designers, architects, scholars and students in general, to investigate their own experience and practice in terms of ethics, reciprocity, and sustainability. Fourteen years later, Arquetopia has become a transnational hub beyond borders. Community has to be understood not as the engagement with “locals,” –especially taking into consideration how Mexico, Peru and Italy have long been the subject of imperial fantasies– but a as a continuous process of building trust, seeing and being seen, and an ethical commitment grounded in reciprocity and responsibility. All of us at Arquetopia are fully invested in changing this world, and as such, at the core of our programs, different sources of knowledge intersect with social justice to acknowledge the diversity of experiences and encounters happening within our spaces, while also providing a multiplicity of perspectives and voices throughout time and space.
Resident Artist & Writer Testimonials

Click here for post-residency testimonials and reflections of many of Arquetopia’s outstanding resident artists, writers, art historians, and other program alumni.
Our Residency Programs Offer Options of the Following Thematic Content:

1. The Implication of Power in the Reproducibility of Images
2. The Imprint of Activism and Problem of Representation at the Intersection of Social Justice
3. Propaganda, Nationalism and the Problem of Embodiment
4. Fashion As Armor and the Performance of Text
5. Moving Beyond the Domesticated Body
6. The Crafting of Race and Class in the Reconfiguration of Time and Space
7. Gender and the Borders of Nationalism
8. The Proxy of Landscape
9. The Enslavement of Color and Its Performativity
10. Botany and the Mapping of Ignorance
11. Women, Cyborgs, and the Roots of the Rebel Body
12. Museums and the Practice of Hoarding Power
13. Visualizing the Weapons of the Renaissance
14. Contesting Epistemologies and the Invention of Nature
15. The Grand Tour and the Fantasy of Mobility
16. Portraiture and the Face-to-Face Encounter
17. The Practice of Extraction and Mesmerizing Baroque
18. Identification and the Invention of Place
19. Tasting Knowledge and Sustenance
20. Authenticity and the Observer in Context
What Our Residency Programs Include

Our residencies are mentored, professional programs with academic content customized to each artist-in-residence. Our programs include mentoring by our directorial and curatorial staff for personalized research assistance and resources, project guidance, and critique; 24-hour studio access with personal workspace and some tools; wireless Internet; furnished, private bedroom accommodation and use of indoor and outdoor shared/common spaces; 24-hour access to the kitchen for residents to prepare their own meals; shared, serviced (single) bathrooms with modern fixtures and showers; utilities and housekeeping. For the instructional residencies we offer, the instruction our residents receive from the Mexican and Andean master artists we contract is funded directly from the residency tuition, and materials and supplies for these instructional courses are included. For our non-instructional residencies, artists bring their own materials and supplies or obtain them locally. Arquetopia provides carefully detailed trip preparation and arrival transportation instructions and orientation materials to all incoming residents. At Arquetopia Oaxaca and Arquetopia Peru, our staff provides pickup and dropoff transportation on the scheduled start and end date of the residency.
Residency Programs We Offer & Their Locations
(Click Each for Program Specifics)
 
1. ARQUETOPIA HONORS ALUMNI Residency Program (by invitation only)
2. ARQUETOPIA LAB ALUMNI Residency Program (by invitation only)
3. ARQUETOPIA INTERNATIONAL MENTORSHIP Program (by invitation only)
4. ART, DESIGN or PHOTOGRAPHY Residency – Puebla, Cusco, or Naples
5. ART EDUCATORS Residency – Puebla
17. PRINTMAKING Residency – Puebla
18. WRITERS Residency – Oaxaca, Cusco, or Naples
Examples of Techniques Supported
(But Not Limited to These)

Drawing • Painting • Organic painting • Natural pigments (cochineal, indigo & other pigments) • Printmaking • Electroetching • Natural ink silkscreen • Papermaking • Collage • Graphic design • Mexican textiles (weaving, embroidery & tapestry) • Peruvian textiles (weaving) • Sculpture • Ceramics • Mexican ceramics (Talavera, majolica & loza vidriada) • Pre-Columbian ceramics • Gold leafing • Wood carving • Performance • Ephemeral (including food & other perishable materials) • Photography (analog, digital & alternative processes) • Film & digital media • Design • Illustration • Environmental art • Murals • Site-specific intervention

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Our Four Residency Spaces & Their Locations

1. PUEBLA, MEXICO – Our spectacular 1930s artist compound in the majestic central historic district
2. OAXACA, MEXICO – Our Mexican-style villa and traditional studio in the open countryside
3. CUSCO, PERU – Our Peruvian-style villa and traditional studio close to Machu Picchu, in the Sacred Valley of the Peruvian Andes
4. NAPLES, ITALY – Our countryside villa and studio in the Naples region of southern Italy
 
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Residency Guidelines

• Selection decisions are based on artistic work and proposed project. Applicants at all stages of their careers (emerging and established) must demonstrate a clear sense of potential.
• Our pool of applicants and residents is diverse in all aspects.
• Our residency programs are competitive opportunities for artists, writers, and researchers to pursue their own work, free of pressure (especially work that in their particular circumstances would normally be difficult to produce).
• The creation of community with fellow artists and staff during the residency period is important.
Funding & Residency Program Tuition

Arquetopia is a self-sustaining, official nonprofit organization of artist-run spaces in two developing countries and receives zero external funding from public, governmental, corporate, or other interests. As with approximately 90% of residency programs around the world, our resident artists and writers cover the operating costs of their own residency programs and travel themselves or through third-party funding. E-mail us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for information regarding the tuition fee for our comprehensive residency programs and for available program tuition reduction options.

Some of our residents apply for third-party funding from their local arts organizations and governments. Many of our residents have also raised their funds (most often exceeding their goals) via crowdfunding programs such as GoFundMe, Pozible, Kickstarter, and Indiegogo.
What to Expect during the Application Process  
 
1. Application. For the first phase, you will submit a secure application on this page of our website, where you will be able to provide information regarding your background and experience, while also providing all the necessary information in terms of your practice, expertise, and project. As required, you will also send additional supporting materials (CV/résumé and five work samples) via e-mail, and cover the requisite USD $35 tax-deductible donation to our youth music scholarship fund via the Global Giving international charity platform at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/arquetopiamusic/ to activate your application (we do not charge an application fee). All information received is treated with confidentiality according to the “Ley Federal De Protección De Datos Personales En Posesión De Los Particulares” of Mexico.
 
2. Secondary Questionnaire. Once your completed application and supporting materials are received, they will be reviewed by our directors and staff, and for the second phase, you will be asked to fill out a short questionnaire. This secondary questionnaire should not be confused with the original application. Although it might seem similar, it will be reviewed anonymously by the international selection jury, without your identity or any of your personal information provided to the panel, to ensure an unbiased review process.
 
3. Video call. For the third phase of the selection process, we will schedule a video call where any remaining questions will be answered, and you will be provided with additional information about Arquetopia’s programs and spaces as well as the specific program that you are applying for. We will provide you with a unique and secure link for this video call. Residency dates will be mutually decided during this call.
 
4. Jury Review. After completing all three phases, your application materials will be finalized and submitted to the international selection jury for final review. Within the next 2 to 3 days, we will contact you directly to communicate the jury’s final decision via e-mail.
 
5. Duration of the Process. The whole application process usually takes an average of 10 days to 2 weeks from application submission to jury decision notification.
Residency Open Calls & Application Deadlines

Click here for our current residency open calls and application deadlines.
In the News
ArquetopiaScholarship Call 2023

Click Here to Meet Our Outstanding Resident Artists & Writers.
 Updated September 2023

We are thrilled that Arquetopia is included on this list of
10 of the Best International Art Residencies around the World!

The End of the Grand Tour?
Virtual Symposium on Artist Residencies: Future, Place and State
June 3 to July 27, 2020
Click here to view the videos and presentations from all sessions.

Hello World is an international project to which artists throughout the
world have submitted art works to share with all of us. We hope you enjoy
this gesture of goodwill and solidarity from our colleagues around the globe,
starting with this link to Arquetopia’s video.

Francisco Guevara, Co-Founder and Co-Director of Arquetopia,
was recently interviewed on the Latinos Who Lunch podcast.
Listen to the full interview here.

Our Arquetopia Virtual Residency 2020 series discussions
are now available to view on YouTube.

 We are excited to announce the
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