About
ECUMENE is a project dedicated to contemporary art as a shared experience. It was born during spring 2020 as an attempt to follow and share the same path while we were forcefully separated as a consequence of the Pandemic Covid-19. The mission of ECUMENE is to create dialogues, confrontation and reflections through different forms of art. It addresses those who are looking to focus on communication and interaction with other people and which believe in a more collaborative and altruistic approach to contemporary art.
What we do
We organise Group Residencies which focus on the continuous confrontation of the different shades that everyone brings to the group, in order to be influenced and melt together.
We conceive Experiential Creative Workshops which bring together personal and collective inner development. We believe that art is an inspiring form of therapy.
We do Open Calls which aim to bring participants closer and allow them to enter in an intimate dialogue, even though they might be physically distant and do not know each other at all.
Who we are
ECUMENE is an idea of Eni Derhemi & Giulia Dongilli.
Eni and Giulia met in 2010 at the Free University of Bolzano, Italy, where they both studied Design & Art and graduated in 2014. Besides sharing a beautiful friendship, they also shared the same views on art and creativity, which would become the first roots of ECUMENE. Their paths were separated after their graduations, but they never lost contact with each other and most importantly, they never lost interest in their beliefs and dreams.They came together again in 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown, through a simple phone call in which they discussed the importance of creation in such a difficult moment to bring people closer and also the need to discuss the current situation that our society found itself in. That call would become the basis of ECUMENE, which would start only some days after with the first virtual Residence welcoming 12 participants. Eni & Giulia knew that it was just the beginning.
Eni Derhemi (1992, Tirana, Albania)
Eni graduates at the Master of Visual Arts at the University of Bologna, Italy, with a focus on History of Contemporary Art and with a thesis on post-90’s Albanian Art influenced by post-dictatorship and migration; two phenomena she’s experienced in first person. Coming from such a background, Eni is interested in thematics such as home, memory and at the same time nomadic existence. In the past years she’s been living and moving in Italy, Germany & Albania. During this time she’s been through different experiences as a cultural worker. Eni’s major inspiration comes from poetry, not only in written form but in any kind of form; with her artistic research she tries to unfold the poetry hiding in everything. She regularly writes poetry and creates visual poems as well. Always under the pressure of choosing rather the theoretical or the practical aspect of art, Eni’s intention has always been to melt them both in an experimental way and share it with other people interested in such a practice, by fulfilling also her permanent desire to teach.
Giulia Dongilli (1991, Rovereto, Italy)
Giulia Dongilli graduates at the Master of Fine Arts in Imaging Arts and Photography of Fondazione Fotografia Modena. Giulia is interested in social and cultural issues, focusing her research on the human being. Her work aims at merging the past and the present through a metaphorical language, rich with references to literature, history and current events, researching archetypal images and mythology. She has developed an interest in organizing workshops with the intent of stimulating a reflection on the role of visual communication today, an universal tool used not only for communicating and expressing oneself, but also for reading out history and our present. An important example of such an interest in Giulia’s work is the project “Lying in Between”, that she joins in 2017 in Samos, Greece, where she will lead workshops on visual art for refugees, using mainly phototherapy techniques. With this experience she increased her interest for experiential workshops integrating her interests for personal development and art therapy. She believes in the power of exchange and in spontaneous learning through experience.