Fellows in Residence
Spring 2025 (Group 1)
Architecture
Doris Sung
Architect, Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Southern California – United States
Doris Sung brings active systems to sustainable design far beyond the simple "greening" of a building. With the belief that buildings can be more sensitive to the changing environment like human skin, she seeks ways to make the building skin dynamic and responsive. Through grant-funded research, she is developing smart materials, such as thermobimetals, to self-ventilate, self-shade, self-structure, self-assemble and self-propel in response to changes in temperatures--all with zero-energy and no controls.
Witnessing smart materials move on their own is magical. For this purpose, this residency will be used to refine a series of pop-up designs made of paper and thermobimetal (a material that curls when heated). They will be distributed as literal laptop dynamic exhibitions in a book format. Additional time will be spent on refining the text and graphics of the publication. The pop-up pages will be arranged in a sunny interior location to freely react to the moving sun at the Bogliasco Foundation.
Dance
Tess Dworman
Choreographer and performer – United States
Tess Dworman is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, performer, and audio describer. In New York, her work has been presented by many institutions including Abrons Art Center, the Chocolate Factory Theater, and Pageant. She performed and toured extensively in the work of Tere O’Connor and Juliana F. May. In 2020, Tess was honored as an “Outstanding Breakout Choreographer” by the Bessie New York Dance & Performance Awards.
During her fellowship, Tess will continue to develop a project entitled “The Con,” which merges her research in dance, impersonation, stand-up comedy, documentary filmmaking, and audio description. These forms come together through her longtime practice of solo improvisation. The ground for this work is a satirical questioning into the consumption of experimental performance, capitalistic provocations on liveness and presence, and the ethos of experimental performance in this time.
Film/Video
Lisa Leeman
Writer/director/producer, Professor of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California – United States
Lisa Leeman has been making award-winning documentary films for thirty-five years. Her cinematic portraits illuminate contemporary social issues through intimate character-driven stories, filmed over many years, as people navigate critical turning points. Leeman’s acclaimed films include Metamorphosis, One Lucky Elephant, Out of Faith, Who Needs Sleep, and Awake. She is a member of the Motion Picture Academy, a tenured Professor of Cinematic Arts and endowed chair at University of Southern California.
While at Bogliasco, Lisa Leeman will be writing and editing her documentary film Walk by Me, a portrait of a transgender artist’s life over thirty years, which is a follow-up to her groundbreaking first documentary, Metamorphosis (Sundance Filmmakers Trophy; POV/PBS, 1990). Filmed over nine years, Walk by Me weaves past and present to explore aging, art and resiliency, faith, friendship, and the blurred boundaries in documentary filmmaking.
Humanities Scholarship
Octavian Gabor
(Philosophy) – Professor of Philosophy, Methodist College – Romania/United States
Octavian Gabor is a professor of philosophy at Methodist College, where he also serves as the Dean of Academic Affairs. He has translated books from Romanian into English, and he has published articles on Dostoevsky and on Greek philosophy.
Octavian’s book project is a philosophical examination of the notions of truth, evil, and beauty in Dostoevsky’s writings (The Idiot, Crime and Punishment, and Brothers Karamazov). While the volume offers a comprehensive view of the notion of truth as it appears in his main novels, it primarily emphasizes that Dostoevsky works with a personal notion of truth (truth is a person), that he associates with beauty.
Literature
Sunita Puri
Writer and Director, Inpatient Palliative Care Service and Associate Professor of Medicine, University of California, Irvine – United States
Sunita Puri is a writer, palliative care physician, and author of That Good Night, a critically acclaimed literary memoir examining her path to the practice of palliative care and her quest to help patients and families redefine what it means to live and die well in the face of serious illness. The recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and residencies from Yaddo and MacDowell, her work appears in the New Yorker, Atlantic, and New York Times. She lectures widely across the country and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at UC Irvine, where she directs the inpatient palliative care program.
Sunita Puri’s second book explores how trauma and illness reconfigure our relationships with our bodies. Through patient and personal stories, she questions tidy societal narratives of “healing” and “resilience” that suggest there are only certain recognizable ways to face and live with upheaval. By diversifying stories of embodied trauma and illness, and reframing the body as a site not only of suffering but transcendence, she explores how healing includes learning how to live in the one place we can’t leave until we do.
Music
Anthony Vine
Composer – United States – Edward T. Cone Special Fellowship in Music
Anthony Vine is a composer based in Brooklyn. He creates music about spirituality, beauty, and sound itself. His work across different media, including performance, installation, and sound sculpture, is minimal in form, yet acoustically dynamic and deeply emotive. His music has been performed internationally and awarded distinctions like the 2024 Rome Prize in Musical Composition at the American Academy in Rome and 2016 Gaudeamus International Composers Award. He also runs Bazetta University Press.
In Roman churches, background music (BGM) can sometimes be heard playing softly. Recordings of chant and hymnody blanket these capacious spaces, inducing calm and masking extraneous noise. The music—wistful, tender, and solemn—points to an idealized past of reverent candlelit worship. These expressions and histories have inspired Vine to compose his own church BGM. The music will cast remnants of sacred music in slow recursive patterns, inviting meditative and contemplative ways of listening.
Theater
Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento
Professor, Chair of Theater and Dance, Macalester College – Brazil/United States
Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento is an artist-scholar from Rio de Janeiro. She is the author of After the Long Silence: The Theater of Brazil’s Post-Dictatorship Generation and Crossing Cultural Borders Through the Actor’s Work. Her articles are published in Brazil, Italy, Poland, Romania, and the USA. Most recently she directed Reasons for Moving, a piece about geopolitical displacement. Tatinge Nascimento is a fellow alumna of Caldera AiR, Trinity College Dublin, and Freie Universität-Berlin.
In Defense of Theater challenges the notion that innovative productions are “performance” rather than “theater.” This position is informed by the replication of passé theatrical forms by mainstream producers and conservatories; the rise in the 70s of the term “performance” to describe time-based visual arts; and funding agencies’ association of theater with text and new plays. The book rejects such short-sighted view to recognize and reclaim theatrical experimentation on the contemporary stage.
Visual Arts
Clare Goodwin
Visual artist – United Kingdom/Switzerland – Fondation Gianni Biaggi De Blasys Special Fellowship
Clare Goodwin is a renowned artist exploring 'Constructive Nostalgia.' She earned an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art, London in 1998 and has lived in Zurich since 2001. Goodwin's work, distinct from Zurich's 'Concrete Art' movement, blends narrative, nostalgia, and geometric, minimal abstraction across the mediums of painting, ceramics, and spatial environments. Goodwin’s art explores personal and collective memories, social histories, and gender stereotypes. Goodwin's work has been exhibited widely and has received awards in Switzerland and abroad. She is represented by Lullin+Ferrari gallery and co-founded StudioK3 project space in Zurich.
Clare Goodwin will develop a project combining collage, drawing, painting and writing. By deconstructing and reinterpreting images from vintage interior design materials (1960s-1990s), she will explore societal norms and domestic aesthetics of those eras. Using digital and analog collage techniques, she will create standalone works and content for an artist book. This project reflects her ongoing focus on spatial furniture assemblages and painting, integrating social and personal histories.