The Economics of Being Looked At | Art Residency

Take two cafés in the same Sardinian village. One has sun-bleached plastic chairs, a wall-mounted television and reggaeton at noon. The other has exposed stone walls, warm light and a menu printed on recycled card to look as though it has always been there. Which is the more authentic? And what can this teach us about authenticity in art? These questions are where this residency begins.

Funded by the European Union through Culture Moves Europe.

  • Application deadline: 10 August 2026
  • Residency: 1 to 31 March 2027
APPLY HERE
More about the residency

For one month in spring 2027, Labó Bosa will bring together five artists from different disciplines to live and work together in our printmaking studio, around a single question: what does authenticity mean today, for places and for artists?

Bosa, like many villages, is under quiet pressure to look the way visitors expect it to, and the things that resist that pressure are often the most honest. Artists feel the same pull, towards what is legible, recognisable and sellable. This residency turns that tension into a research question.

Over the month, alongside their own work, the artists turn that question inward and examine their own visual grammar: the mark that sits underneath the style and the technique, and how much of it is truly theirs and how much has been shaped by the pull to be seen.

Printmaking becomes the common ground for that enquiry, a shared medium in which each artist’s mark can meet the others’. Working side by side in a studio built for it, the group moves towards a single collaborative edition that recreates the village effect in miniature: from five individual marks, a collective work emerges, not a merger and not a compromise, but something that holds all of them and could not have been made by any one of them alone.

WHAT'S INCLUDED

  • A private bedroom in a shared apartment in the historic centre of Bosa
  • Access to our riverside studio, equipped for screen printing, relief printing, and digital and generative work
  • Mentorship from art, curation and printmaking practitioners
  • A closing open studio in our gallery
  • Dedicated support: creative feedback, introductions to the local community, and guidance on life in Sardinia

FIVE AT ONCE

Most of our residencies happen one artist at a time. This one is different. Five artists from different disciplines share a studio and a home for 31 days, and that closeness is the point. Each resident pursues their own practice alongside scheduled sessions that examine authenticity through their own visual grammar and through observation of the village and its people. In parallel, the whole group develops a collaborative print edition that deliberately recreates the “village effect”: from five individual marks, a collective work that none of them could have made alone.

MENTORING

Three mentors hold the residency.

  • Marco Sebastianelli, founder and director of Labó Bosa, leads the programme.
  • Enya Daniela Idda, artist and art therapist, guides the collaborative process and the work of shared authorship.
  • Alberto Marci, printmaker and lecturer at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Sassari, oversees the final collaborative edition.

FULLY FUNDED

There is no fee to take part. Culture Moves Europe covers a €930 allowance for the full month and your return travel. Attendance for the entire 31 days is required.

Check this link for more info on daily and travel allowances, and top-ups for green mobility, visa etc.

WHO WE ARE LOKING FOR

Artists and cultural practitioners, working individually across a range of disciplines (photography, painting, illustration, architecture, design and beyond), with an interest in printmaking, in questions of authenticity and place, and in collaborative, shared ways of making and living. No prior printmaking experience is required.

You must be legally resident in a Creative Europe country other than Italy*. If you are selected, you will be asked to provide an official document proving your residence, as required by Culture Moves Europe.

APPLICATION PROCESS


Apply through our online form. You will be asked for a short artist statement, a link to your portfolio, and your initial ideas on the residency’s theme. Applicants must be legally resident in a Creative Europe country other than Italy*. If you are selected, you will be asked to provide an official document proving your residence, as required by Culture Moves Europe.

*This Call is open to artists that are:

  • Legally residing in one of the Creative Europe countries: Albania, Austria, Armenia, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Kosovo,[1] Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia, Ukraine;
  • Or in one of the 9 Outermost Regions: Azores (Portugal), Canary Islands (Spain), French Guiana (France), Guadeloupe (France), Madeira (Portugal), Martinique (France), Mayotte (France), Reunion Island (France), and Saint-Martin (France);
  • Or in one of the 13 Overseas Countries and Territories: Aruba (The Netherlands), Bonaire (The Netherlands), Curaçao (The Netherlands), French Polynesia (France), French Southern and Antarctic Territories (France), Greenland (Denmark), New Caledonia (France), Saba (The Netherlands), Saint Barthelemy (France), Sint Eustatius (The Netherlands), Sint Maarten (The Netherlands), St. Pierre and Miquelon (France), and Wallis and Futuna Islands (France).
The participants’ permanent residence cannot be Italy.