Special Projects: April 2022 at Fountainhead Residency

Nestor Siré and Pavlo Kerestey

Joining us in April 2022, Nestor and Pavlo are joining Fountainhead through two very significant partnerships. Nestor, who was initially selected for a residency in partnership with O, Miami in April 2020, was finally rescheduled after two years of significant global upheaval. Pavlo, a Ukraine national, is exhibiting new work in the Miami outpost of the Voloshyn Gallery after their planned exhibition in Kviv was postponed due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Nestor Siré

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Nestor Sire is interested in hacking the extraordinary social phenomena that make up contemporary Cuban life. A multimedia artist whose primary mediums revolve around technology, Nestor’s work is grounded in relational aesthetics and distinctly points its gaze at life in Cuba - an unparalleled experience where ingenuity and invention is necessary to survive. Working across video, photography, hardware and software development, video games and video art, Nestor’s work often aims to intervene in how a system operates to uncover more profound questions about how societies form and ultimately operate. In particular, Nestor is interested in the unofficial methods that facilitate the circulation of information in the digital realm, and often creates works that uncover how these underground networks of information have always existed in some form or another.

His practice is based heavily on research and conversations with both artists and everyday people, and he works toward finding both academic and aesthetic modes from which to display his findings. Recent projects like a video game challenging players to circumvent the everyday obstacles a burgeoning entrepreneur might face in Cuba, or a wi-fi device made from everyday objects that embeds the network’s name with a poem and can be placed anywhere and accessed by anyone, are just some of the ways his work achieves its ends. Nestor’s work has been exhibited with the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Queens Museum, New Museum, Hong-Gah Museum, The Photographers’ Gallery, the Havana Biennial, Manifesta 13 Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, and Curitiba Biennial, among others.

Pavlo Kerestey

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Pavlo Kerestey’s work typically begins with an intervention with his collaborator Susanne Clausen; he might project a film on the side of an abandoned building, or stage a performance in a busy town square. The people who happen upon his works become unwitting participants, in a manner that allows Pavlo to consider their particular social roles. Reiterating these everyday interruptions until he feels he’s captured the essence of how we interact and connect with one another in his own contrived social experiment, Pavlo’s work then moves into its second phase: Back in the studio, he creates vivid, fluidly abstract paintings from memory that reflect on the experience. Those paintings are later repurposed for new works - appearing in his films or performances - creating a regenerative dialogue and record of how our reactions and receptions change over time.

Pavlo’s work reflects on the tense expectation of disaster - a fitting subject matter given the current circumstances of his native country, Ukraine. Pavlo is joining Fountainhead Residency this month for an abbreviated period of time, while he prepares to for an exhibition with the Voloshyn Gallery. Owners Max and Julia Voloshyn have mounted a socially charged show that was supposed to make its way back to Kviv, when Russian airstrikes impeded air travel (the gallery is now being used as a bomb shelter). Pavlo is a featured artist in the exhibition, titled The Memory on Her Face; his work has also been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and is part of the collections of the National Museum of Ukraine and the Zenko Foundation.