Arrival · reading the territory
First week. Walks through the area, conversation with locals, fauna map, springs map, rock-painting sites map. You don't start producing — you start looking. The notebook fills before the canvas.
Creation · Artist ResidencyWhere the territory
Where the territory
becomes work
Merkaba Temple · Iramaia · Chapada Diamantina
Concept
The landscape is the material.
You don't come here to escape the world. You come because you found a door in the world that was closed — and that door is now open. Painting, sculpture, installation, performance, writing, visual research: the medium is free. What is required is presence. The territory pays the rest.
The Torus Institute artist residency is a rare window: generous physical structure (covered studio, lodging, food), a community of researchers, a 50-hectare territory of Chapada and archaeological sites with millennial rock paintings. You cross the month with all of this at hand — and give back a work.
Structure
Four phases that shape the month.
The residency has a loose design — room for you to lose and find yourself. But there's an underlying rhythm that repeats in each edition: arrival, research, creation, opening. Four times, one arc.
Research · guided expeditions
Second week. Visits led by archaeologists and locals to the most important sites — dated rock paintings, geological formations, sacred water points. Each expedition is also conversation: ancestry, memory of the land, possible materials.
Creation · studio and process
Third week. Hands in the work. Open studio, materials available, weekly meetings among artists for horizontal critique. The curator accompanies when requested, steps back when the work asks for silence. Some pieces are born quickly. Others rewrite themselves several times.
Opening · collective show at the Temple
Fourth week. The Merkaba Temple opens to the local public, Torus community, partners and family. Each artist installs their piece in dialogue with the space. Opening ceremony, process sharing, extended company. The works remain on view for a month after the residency ends.
Visual ancestry
Rock paintings alive in the territory.
Thirty minutes by foot from the studio, rock walls hold paintings dated more than five thousand years old. Before any contemporary art movement, this place was already a territory of visual language. The first pictorial gestures of humanity happened on walls like these.
Guided visits with archaeologists who partner with the Institute. You don't copy — you dialogue. The mineral pigments that became paint five thousand years ago are still on the ground, within reach. Continuity is the method.
Available resources
What's included.
All-inclusive residency — you only bring the project and the specific materials each work requires. The rest is structure.
- —Shared covered studio · 24/7
- —Private lodging in bioconstruction chalet
- —Plant-based meals · three a day
- —Access to Merkaba Temple for practice and exhibition
- —Guided visits to 4 archaeological sites
- —Weekly peer critique among residents
- —Curator follow-up on demand
- —Final collective opening + 30-day exhibition
- —Professional photographic documentation of the process
Next open call
Send your portfolio and open the conversation.
Tell Iara what your project is, what stage of your career you're in, and whether there are specific dates that work for you. She connects with the curator and replies with criteria for the next call, rates and selection schedule.
Talk to Iara on WhatsApp— Torus Community
Iramaia · Chapada Diamantina · since 2018