Castello Art Residency 2026
The 2026 edition of Castello Art Residency was held in Umbria, Italy, as a 10-day international program bringing together artists from different disciplines. Developed around the theme “Sacraments: Echoes,” this year’s residency explored the legacy of medieval culture, sacred imagery, and religious symbolism within European art history, considering how these traditions can be revisited through contemporary artistic languages.
The program created a space for reflection on the continuing presence of sacred symbols, rituals, and visual narratives in contemporary culture. Through painting, sculpture, installation, digital media, sound, performance, and other forms of artistic expression, participating artists engaged with the dialogue between historical memory and the present, transforming echoes of the sacred into new artistic responses.
Studio and Garden Practice
Throughout the program, artists worked across the studio spaces and the garden, engaging with the residency environment as a source of research, material, and context. This process led to the development of site-specific projects that responded to the architecture, landscape, and atmosphere of the place.
tutorials
with curator
The residency program was curated by Olya Eliseeva, who guided the artists throughout the 10-day process. Participants received individual tutorials and engaged in daily curatorial dialogue, allowing them to develop their ideas, refine their concepts, and respond more deeply to the context of the residency.
This ongoing curatorial support helped artists shape their projects in relation to the theme, the site, and their individual practices, creating a focused environment for research, experimentation, and artistic development.
Martha Guillorn
The artist creates an immersive site-specific installation inspired by “Sacraments: Echoes” and the architectural context of Umbria. Using electrical wire shaped into cursive Italian text, the work forms a sanctuary-like structure where viewers can reflect on memory, absence, love, and acceptance. The project continues the artist’s text-based practice, transforming language into a physical and contemplative space.
Ekaterina Ilina
As part of Castello Art Residency 2026, Ekaterina Ilina reinterprets traditional Italian apotropaic masks through a contemporary sculptural language. Drawing on ideas of protection, vulnerability, and the Earth as a shared home, her work brings together cement, mosaic, construction materials, and local stone to explore the fragile boundary between history, landscape, and decay.