Villa Waldberta

manuel arturo abreu

October – December 2024

manuel arturo abreu (b. 1991, Santo Domingo) is a non-disciplinary artist working with what is at hand, in a process of magical thinking with attention to the ritual aspects of aesthetics. They grew up in the Bronx and, since 2009, have lived and worked in the Pacific Northwest, having received their BA in Linguistics from Reed College in 2014. Their work often materializes in sculpture, still and moving image, performance, writing, and sound, driven by a desire for desublimated, accessible, anti-repressive modes of production and contemplation. During their residency, abreu will continue ongoing research on figures like Anton Wilhem Amo, Chief Susanne Wenger Àdùnní Olórìṣà, Angelo Soliman, Vicente Lusitano, among others to situate Euro-African syncretic religious diaspora in a broader context of the encounter between Germany and Africa.

abreu is the author of two books of poetry—List of Consonants (2015), transtrender (2016)—and one book of theory, Incalculable Loss (2018). Major projects include garage residency (2015–2019), a no-budget artist residency; home school (2015–), a free pop-up art school; and the Alternative History of Abstraction (2021–), a research and production program that rejects the common origin myth of abstraction as stemming from the early 20th century European avantgarde.

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