Residency VILA SUL

María José Murillo (Peru, 1989) is an artist, textile maker, and cultural worker born and raised in the south of Peru. Through weaving, she embarks on a path of re-existence, reclaiming and nurturing her Indigenous cultural heritage, historically excluded from the Eurocentric education she received in her homeland. She holds an MFA in Studio from the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2017–2019) and a BFA in Painting from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (2006–2011).
Following her graduate studies, she led the Education Department at the Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco in 2019. In 2021, she co-founded the art collective Noqanchis with Andean weavers from Pitumarca, Cusco. Murillo participated in the WIELS Residency in Brussels in 2022 (ICPNA–Artus Scholarship) and the Recherches Residency at the Musée de la Tapisserie et des Arts Textiles in Tournai (2024). She has served on the Board of Directors of the Textile Society of America and participated in the Sharjah Biennial 16: to carry (2025). Her work, together with Noqanchis, is currently featured in On Loss and Absence: Textiles of Mourning and Survival at the Art Institute of Chicago.
 

India

Ankit Jitendra Ravani is a visual artist and puppeteer who lives and works between Mumbai and Delhi. He is a recipient of the Goethe residency at Vila Sul in Salvador, Brazil, 2026. He has an eclectic interdisciplinary journey spanning contemporary arts, puppetry, and arts pedagogy.
He studied in India and holds an MFA from Shiv Nadar University, Noida, and a BVA from MSU, Baroda. He works with drawings, found objects, and residues of performative gestures as still or moving images to generate fragmented narratives in space. Through his practice, Ankit negotiates the space between the individual and the collective by re-encountering everyday images, allowing their settled meanings to loosen and re-form. He creates images that play with alienation and familiarity, reflecting on the paradoxes within self and society. Often rooted in personal experience, his practice perforates tension with humour, play, and a foregrounding of what is frequently overlooked.
Ankit is fascinated by the relationship between the human and the inanimate, which drew him to puppetry. His puppet performances have been presented in museums, cultural centres, festivals, and institutions across India, and he has also performed at the Obratsov Puppet Theatre Festival in Moscow (2025). He has trained in Togalu Gombeyatta, a leather shadow puppetry form from southern India, under Gunduraju, a ninth-generation master puppeteer.
He worked as an art educator in Bangalore (2019–2023) and has facilitated workshops and educational modules across India, contributing to institutions such as Khoj Studios, the National School of Drama, New Delhi, the National Institute of Design, Haryana, and the Kochi Students’ Biennale.
Ankit has received the Inlaks Fine Arts Award (2022) and the IFA Explorations Grant (2024). He was a participant in the SKAP Summer School at Ivy Lodge, Kasoli (2025), and a resident at 1Shanthiroad Studio/Gallery, Bangalore (2022), and the Incubator Residency, Baroda (2023). Ankit continues to design and perform with his team, collaborate, draw, and indulge in picture books.
 

Brazil / Argentina

Dudu Quintanilha (Bauru, 1987) is a Brazilian-Argentinian artist based in Berlin. His practice develops mainly through video, performance, photography, and text, articulating art as a conceptual field where contemporary subjectivity is investigated from sensitive dimensions of existence. His works emerge from performative and collaborative processes.
He is interested in exploring ways of being in the world and the boundaries between art and life, memory and imagination. His projects are often built on relationships of care, listening, and presence, creating spaces of intimacy, ambiguity, and transformation. Rather than producing closed representations, Quintanilha understands artistic work as an open process of experimental documentation, where gestures, images, and words remain unstable.
He studied at the Städelschule (Frankfurt am Main) and has received international awards and residencies, exhibiting his work in institutions in Europe and Latin America.


 

Canada

RÊVE ULTIME is a burst of French indie pop best danced with your tongue out—disillusioned yet infectious, blending catchy rhythms with lyrics shaped by insights from social work. Think blood orange ice cream with soy sauce sprinkles: unexpected, bold, weird, and fun.

Produced by three of Quebec’s finest (Samuel Gemme, Ryan Battistuzzi, and Christophe Charest-Latif), RÊVE ULTIME is Alexandre Craigh’s first solo venture after years working with bands like Tango Golf Tango, Cherry Chérie, and ALICE, touring across Canada and China.

Illustration sits at the core of the project’s DNA: from merch to social media, visual storytelling runs parallel to the music. A graphic novel may emerge from the creative residency in Brazil, following a character’s absurd quest for happiness amid contemporary contradictions.
Craigh holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work (2009) and has supported adults through life transitions for over 15 years. Self-employed since 2022, he bridges creative industries and mental wellness, speaking on topics ranging from Bill 27 to mental health in music, including at the M for Montreal festival.