Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian Launch Menorca Residency with Hauser & Wirth
By Theo Belci
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Artists Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian are launching a long-term residency for artists and writers on the Balearic island Menorca. The residency is organized in collaboration with Hauser & Wirth, which currently operates a location on the island.
The program, entitled The Residency at Casa Gràcia, will provide artists and writers with a quiet retreat to further their practices in Mahon, Menorca’s capital. Three different spaces within the Casa Gràcia will be available to residents: a 300m2 studio, a study, and the largest private walled garden in the Mahon city center. The Menorcan architects Maimó&Brosa and Laplace are responsible for developing the residency building.
Applications for the first cohort of residents are now open, with Casa Gràcia encouraging applicants from the Balearic Islands and Spain.
“Menorca has offered me something rare: a sense of slowness, clarity, and openness that allows thought and creativity to expand,” Johnson said in a statement. “Creating this residency is an opportunity to share that experience with other artists—offering time and space for reflection, experimentation, conversation, and renewal.”
Following a selection process – the board members in charge of assessing applicants includes journalist Patrick Radden Keefe and artist Hank Willis Thomas – five residency slots will be awarded annually: three visual artists will be invited for residencies of up to three months, and two writers for extended periods of up to six months.
The writers and artists selected will be able to benefit from the support of the local team at Hauser & Wirth Menorca, an art center on Illa del Rei that opened in 2021.
According to Hauser and Wirth, the residencies “are self-directed without obligation to produce an outcome or public presentation.” Rather than focusing on the end result, the residency awardees are being encouraged towards “creative development and deep reflection, while fostering meaningful engagement with the local community on the island.”
“There is something profoundly moving about Menorca and its mystical atmosphere,” Hovsepian said in a statement. “Menorca is unique among the Balearic Islands for this extraordinary archaeological presence, and there is something deeply humbling about existing alongside that kind of history and mystery. For me, Menorca has always been a place that expands inner space where ideas surface more freely and where creativity feels connected to something both personal and ancient.”
This article was originally published by Artforum.
