Dentro La Terra

Max Sister, a French visual artist, merges his background in sound engineering with art, creating site-specific works that use natural and immaterial elements like light, sound, and vibration. Educated at Trebas Montreal, ISTS Paris, and the École Supérieure d'Art d'Aix-en-Provence, Sister's art focuses on the subtle interplay between humans and their environment. His works, featured at venues like Frac Sud, Fondation Agnès B and Fondation Vasarely, invite deep engagement and contemplation, highlighting imperceptible natural phenomena. Graduating in 2022, Sister continues to explore the relation between natural and cultural forms.

Thanks to our partnership with Artinvita, Sister worked on a new installation at Dentro La Terra with support from Institut Francais.

Maryline Chery is a Haitian-origin actress, playwright and improviser based in Montreal. Chery's work includes her one-woman show "Afrodisiaque," which has been featured as part of the programming for Black History Month. This show offers insightful and controversial observations about black women's hair. Her artistic expression is marked by a deep connection to her Haitian roots, passed down through stories, a love of play, words, and artistic strength from her father.

During her residency at Dentro La Terra she worked on a tragicomic play “Menaj” (working title) that explores the role of feminism and “queer” identity within the Haitian community. Her residency was made possible through the partnership with Montreal-based Espace de la Diversite.

Christopher DiRaddo is a Canadian author, editor, and producer based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He has authored two novels: "The Family Way," published in 2021, and "The Geography of Pluto," released in 2014. His novel "The Family Way" was shortlisted for the F.G Bressani Literary Prize. DiRaddo's essays and short stories have been featured in various publications, including "First Person Queer: Who We Are (So Far)," "Here & Now: An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing," and "The Globe and Mail."

In addition to his writing, DiRaddo is actively involved in the literary community in Montreal. He is the founder and host of the Violet Hour reading series and book club, which focuses on LGBTQ literary events. He often collaborates with organizations such as Fierté Montreal and the Blue Metropolis Montreal International for these events.

DiRaddo's first novel, "The Geography of Pluto," was published by Cormorant Books and gained recognition as one of the Top 20 Bestselling LGBTQ modern classics of 2016 by Toronto’s Glad Day Bookshop.

Suring his residency at Dentro La Terra, DiRaddo worked on his third novel ‘Hard Feelings’, primarily set in the suburbus of Saint-Hubert, Quebec in 1989. His residency was made possible through the partnership with Montreal-based Espace de la Diversite.

India De Almeida is a French actress known for her roles in several films and television series. Her notable works include "It Must Be Heaven" (2019), "President Alphonse" (2017), "Munch" (2016), "Avenir" (2023), and the TV mini-series "Grand Hôtel" (2020), where she played the character Emilie in "Avenir" and Eva in "Grand Hôtel".

Dentro La Terra had the pleasure to host her as part of our partnership with Artinvita, as she prepared a new work to be included in the 2024 edition of the Festival.

Suzanne de Baecque is a French actress and director. De Baecque is known for her roles in various films and television series. Some of her notable works include "The Dazzled," "Jeanne du Barry," "The Crime Is Mine," "Angry Annie," "Lover for a Day," "Belle belle belle," "Derby Girl," and "Aspergirl." Additionally, she starred in "Le rêve de Mila" (2019), "Along Came Love" (2023), and "Angry Annie" (2022). Suzanne de Baecque is an alumna of Cours Florent and l’École du Nord, and has collaborated with filmmakers such as Sarah Suco, Blandine Lenoir, Nikola Lange, François Ozon, and Maïwenn.

Dentro La Terra had the pleasure to host her as part of our partnership with Artinvita, as she prepared a new work to be included in the 2024 edition of the Festival.

Based in Normandy, Baptiste Anne articulates his artistic practice around nature, vegetation and more specifically the tree. Over the years, he has experimented with various mediums such as photography, sculpture, videos, sound and drawing. He continues his work by exploring the different states and shapes of the tree, with a focus on understanding the tree as part of our society and ecosystem.

At Dentro La Terra Baptiste will have an opportunity to continue his experiments and to showcase his work as part of the next edition of Artinvita Festival in 2023.

stephanie roberts. Based in a small town in Quebec, stephanie roberts is a prize-winning poet, widely published and critically praised. Her work has been featured in numerous periodicals and anthologies, in Canada, the US and Europe.

Born in Central America, stephanie roberts grew up from the ages of two to eight, as an undocumented child, in Brooklyn, New York. She attended New York University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Marketing. For a few years thereafter, she worked in a number of New York City department stores. After growing disillusioned with the grind of retailing, she took a sabbatical, undertaking biblical studies for a year, subsequently receiving a diploma with high honors. She eventually emigrated to Canada where she lived in and around Montréal before settling, as a citizen, in the Beauharnois region of Quebec.

At Dentro La Terra she will work on a new project tentatively titled ‘Poems Across the Americas’, a semi-autobiographical poetry manuscript consisting of poems which traverse the poet’s experience as citizen of three countries: Panama, the US and Canada.

Based in Montreal, Kimberley Ann Surin is a French-Canadian filmmaker with Haitian descent. Over the years, she had the chance to work on a variety of projects, including fiction, documentary, advertising as well as animation. In 2020, she directed and wrote her first documentary ‘Against All Odds’, a short film about the lack of diversity in professional and junior hockey with retired NHL player Georges Laraque as the main protagonist. In early 2021, she directed, wrote and produced her second short film ‘Nourrir les Rêves’, which premiered at the HotDocs International Film Festival, now available on Crave. The focus of all her creative work is to uplift the voices of black, marginalized, and under-represented talent in front of and behind the camera. At Dentro La Terra she will work on a feature-length fiction film.

A plastic artist, Michel Lauricella joins Dentro La Terra as part of the 2022 edition of ARTINVITA - Festival Internazionale degli Abruzzi. Michel trained at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Having taught morphology for about twenty years, he subsequently worked at the Atelier des Beaux-Arts of the City of Paris, Gobelins (Paris), Lisaa (Paris) and then founded his own atelier: Fabrica 114. Along this activity, he developed his own research on drawing and modeling. During his stay in Arielli Michel worked on 'La memoria delle cose', an installation created jointly with Simon Rouby with support from the Institut Français d’Italie. The work is inspired by the short text ‘De la rigueur de la science’ (Jorge Luis Borges, 1999, 57) where the cartographers of an imaginary empire elaborate a 1:1 scale map, so large that it coincides with the empire itself. Over time, it is forgotten, bringing with it the discipline to which it gave birth: geography. The installation will look at the landscape of Abruzzo from very different perspectives, ranging from large scale geological phenomena to the "small lives" of the side streets and the details found in the edges of roads and ‘calanchi’. Their drawings will help understand, measure, remember and populate this land.

A filmmaker, tagger, collagist, painter and muralist, Nicole MacDonald will be staying at Dentro La Terra to film, engage the local community and realize artworks. During her residency, she will build on experience gained in Detroit to work with local people on their history and future aspirations, with a focus on the connection shrinking communities and areas in decline establish with the land.

An award-winning writer, anthropologist and musician based in Montréal, Yara el-Ghadban will be working at Dentro La Terra on her fourth novel. After having published L'Ombre de l'olivier (2011), Le Parfum de Nour (2015) and Je suis Ariel Sharon (2018), she will retreat to work on a novel set in a dystopian future, that will explore the links between coexistence, pacifism, justice and nature, as well as the desire to live harmoniously as humans and with nature without seeking to dominate one or the other.

A French cellist, Noémie Boutin joined Dentro La Terra in 2021 as part of her appearance in Artinvita. During this festival Noémie performed together with Alvise Sinivia and Jules Benveniste Chants d’Amour a surprising dialogue between music by Benjamin Britten and images by Jean Genet. Noémie is a cellist recognized for her commitment to innovation and creation, having ventured into unusual artistic discoveries, including collaborations with circus artists, cooks, actors.

A screen writer from France, Simon Rouby studied in Paris and Los Angeles. His works have been selected in numerous international festivals including Cannes, Annecy, San Sebastian, London, Tokyo and Sao Paulo. During his stay at Dentro La Terra in 2021 worked on Pangea an immersive video installation project that will explore through data and less measurable elements our relationship with earth and its movements. Pangea will be featured at Artinvita - Festival Internazionale degli Abruzzi.

Kongstad Studio is a design start-up based in Copenhagen that works with sustainable materials and impactful organisations on art prints, graphic design and painting on canvas. During their stay at Dentro La Terra, Kongstad Studio documented the work of artists, their interaction with communities and included Abruzzo as an element of inspiration in a creative journey across Italy.

An American writer, Sandra has been part of the inaugural cohort of Dentro La Terra residents in 2019 to work on a novel that combines historical fiction and family sagas to draw an intricate map of African diasporas.

A journalist and writer from Tunisia, Malek has been working on feminism and joined the residency program in 2019 to continue her work on these issues.