Residencies
UNA RESIDENZA TUTTA PER SÉ | A RESIDENCY OF ONE’S OWN
Founded in 2021 thanks to the generous hospitality of collectors Umberto Morera and Anna Maria Balsano Morera, A Residency of One’s Own is an artist residency conceived and organised by Maja Arte Contemporanea.
Held annually throughout the month of May, the Residency takes place in the village of Romazzano, approximately 8 km from Todi (Perugia, Italy).
Reflecting the Gallery’s commitment to promoting concrete initiatives that support women in the contemporary art world, the Residency is open exclusively to women artists.
The open call for the seventh edition (May 2027) will be published in November 2026.
Edition 2026
HANNAH J. KOHLER
Romazzano: Landscape as a Stage
In Romazzano, the landscape itself became a stage. Amidst olive trees, tranquil lakes and ancient walls, photographs emerged that oscillate between myth, fairy tales and art history. I slipped in and out from behind the camera, becoming Venus, Flora, narrator and observer all at once. Ancient stories and familiar visual worlds were reinterpreted, restaged and brought into the present. The place’s unique tranquillity, the shifting light and the vastness of the Umbrian landscape opened up a space for experimentation, observation and transformation. My time in Umbria was characterised by light, silence and the search for new images of femininity, images that now live on in photographs and cinematic fragments, carrying within them the memory of this place.
– Hannah J. Kohler
GALLERY
Edition 2025
TERESA BUCCA
The Estrangement Before the Song
Grief as a non-linear journey toward accepting the natural order of life and healing from pain, in contrast with a blooming May, indifferent to the need for inner emptiness. Each image corresponds to an unordered, isolated, and symbolic emotional stage. The juxtaposition of anatomical forms and plant elements evokes funerary iconographies and the botanical symbols of Renaissance painting. In the creation of this tomb lies the possibility of dwelling in the void, recognizing the fracture, and making room for it. The images—scanned botanical arrangements and family X-rays—offer themselves as fleeting sites of disorientation, waiting for something to begin.
– Teresa Bucca
GALLERY
Edition 2024
DIANA APARO
Lions of time
Romazzano (Italy). A 13th-century convent which was recently turned into an artist’s residence (2021). A fortress erected to protect the life and work of women for centuries, this space fosters a deep connection with one’s inner signs. Humanity here has been experienced so strongly as to be etched in the stones. Thus my own research evolves, by painting matter that lies somewhere in between stone and memory; lions and lionesses sculpted by time so as to morph into humanity.
– Diana Aparo
GALLERY
Edition 2023
ILARIA SAGARIA
Chrysalises
In the world of insect the chrysalis represents the nymphal stage of butterflies who prepare to undergo a metamorphosis. Instead in psychology it becomes a symbol of the potential of being in the phases of its transformations: as well as the butterfly emerges at the end of a mysterious process of change, similarly human consciousness goes through various phases, enclosing a process and a story. Since ancient times, people have been fascinated by the mystery of metamorphosis which had a symbolic value, like a message that has never been deciphered.
This work, still ongoing, is an attempt to investigate adolescence as a history of being and its change on more levels. In fact, adolescence is a phase of the life cycle in which a young person lives a delicate moment of development, not only externally but also internally and in which balances are always unstable.
The images with a poetic vision of change, in which we find portraits of a psychological and intimate nature, are combined with images from the scientific-entomological repertoire, but also images of faded pages and words that underline the concept of impermanence in the difficult construction of the self. Inner and outer world are mixed in an attempt to decipher the mysterious riddle of adolescence.
GALLERY
Edition 2022
AGATA STĘPIEŃ
Feeling deeply
The artist’s ability to feel deeply, which creates the immense sensitivity running through her works, does not slumber while she is immersed in mundane chores. Thirty works on paper convey this specific manner of feeling from an exquisitely intimate perspective.
Agata Stępień shares her impressions on past situations or memories; all true, these are transformed by her gaze into images, each paired with a title that is reminiscent of a conversation or interrupted call. Together, they rise as a sort of 2022 urban poem.
Edition 2021
ANNA DI PAOLA
Todi: Lost within a room of one's own... found within.
One needs time to pause, to get lost, to lose oneself.
In the light that enlivens shapes, touches the color in a face, or a flower, or a place. Allowing myself to be lost in the wonder and bewilderment that emerges from the world’s lands, nature, human beings. In the thoughts, the stars, the clouds; in the lives of others; within memories. Trying to absorb the myriad stimuli and the beauty of the world to then describe it, revisiting it through the artwork, the image… finding myself.
– Anna Di Paola
Gallery
