FABRIC Arts Festival announces lineup of artists and musicians

FALL RIVER — An international spotlight will be cast on Southeastern Massachusetts this September as the FABRIC Arts Festival brings a wide array of acclaimed musicians and visual artists to Fall River. The eclectic and diverse programming centers around the concept of identity and the immigrant experience, particularly those that have shaped Fall River’s unique cultural character.

MUSIC: Kelsey Lu, Mal Devisa, Lula Pena, Downtown Boys, MEDEIROS/LUCAS, Manel, The Island Man and the United Bands Project (Saint Anthony’s Band, Our Lady of Light Band, S.C. Mosteirense Band and Santa Cecilia Band)

ART: Alberonero, Braulio Amado & Nick Shiarizzi, Jonathan Saldanha & Catarina Miranda, Elian Chali, WSDIA (WeShouldDoItAll) and René Gagnon

FILM and EXHIBITIONS: Red Bull | Diogo Lima- A-Z Rap: Filhos do Vento (Sons of the Wind), Paulo Abreu: I Don't Belong Here, Diana Vidrascu: Timeshores, Miguel C. Tavares & José Alberto Gomes: East Atlantic

Taking place Sept. 25-28, FABRIC will be comprised of a series of music concerts, films, art exhibitions and murals. Using these art forms, the festival will present a creative experience that challenges the audience to discover Fall River in new and exciting ways, through the lens of a group of artists that will transform perceptions as the City becomes the center of their artistic discourse. These dynamic projects will create temporary and permanent points of interest that will leave an indelible mark on the city, inspiring a new narrative that builds upon Fall River’s industrial heritage and reinforces a cultural bond with Portugal.

FABRIC will occupy several venues and locations in the Purchase St. area of downtown Fall River: The Narrows Arts Center, Gnome Create, the Fall River Carousel at Battleship Cove, The Eagle Event Center, People Incorporated, and the Police Athletic League (P.A.L.) The goal is to encourage local artists to collaborate, converse and create with the invited artists. The festival will be preceded by a residential working period, where the community will be able to witness these works of art come to life.

Organized by Casa dos Açores de Nova Inglaterra, with the curatorship of international art impresarios Jesse James, Sofia Carolina Botelho, and António Pedro Lopes, FABRIC Arts Festival is a platform for creation and presentation of artistic excellence through a program of arts, music and film.

KELSEY LU

Kelsey Lu is a classically trained cellist however her approach to the instrument is truly unconventional. As The Guardian states, “Intricate and sculptural, North Carolina singer-songwriter-producer Kelsey Lu deals in music where the unifying genre is, essentially, beauty.” Having collaborated with many, including Florence + The Machine, Solange Knowles, Blood Orange, Kelela, Kamasi Washington, Jamie XX, and Sampha, Lu’s debut album Blood unveils a whole new territory for her music. Dream-pop, blues, electronics, classical and ambient music are put together in a very contemporary, definitively L. A. sound, driven by a surreal, powerful voice.

MAL DEVISA

Northampton, Massachusetts musician Deja Carr is the force behind the slightly mysterious project Mal Devisa. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Carr began playing music at age 12 when she and a group of friends started an all-female band, Who’da Funk it?. After 5 years of performing, writing and recording, Carr began to learn bass and save scraps of her forgotten songs. Mal Devisa started soon after, out of slanted basement walls and busted, dusty kick drums. Her sound spans jazz, noise, folk, hip hop, experimental and many other forms. Her lyrics are venomous and then sweet, her rhythms are lightning and whisper into the haunting DIY spaces she stumbles into. With incredible live performances, the project becomes more of a feeling, a moment, a time in space that requires you to get real and lost, with no intention of being found.

LULA PENA

It only took two albums for the world to understand the special place that Lula Pena claims for herself in world music. One of the greatest fado singers born in Portugal but raised in the world, Lula Pena has become somewhat of a myth: she is all at once a singer-poet, a mysterious woman that hides behind the guitar to best surprise us, and an exquisite composer whose music is a living organism. Her music exists in a strange ocean, bordered by continents, called folk blues, flamenco, French chanson, fado, bossa nova among others, grazing them all and leaving none intact. She has a unique, deep voice, inspired by multiple references and has gathered a worldwide stream of devoted followers.

DOWNTOWN BOYS

After 2017, it became clear that music had to reconnect with a past of politically-engaged bands; either you live comfortably with the reigning power structures, or you choose to use your music as a vehicle for the dismantling of oppression and the creation of something better. The position of Providence, RI’s Downtown Boys has been clear since they started storming through basements and DIY spaces with their radically-minded rock music: they are here to topple the white-cis-het hegemony and draft a new history. This is how Downtown Boys began, combining revolutionary ideals with boundless energy and contagious, inclusive fun. They’re using the platform and success they've reached as a megaphone for their protest music, amplifying and centering Chicana, queer, and Latino voices in the far-too-whitewashed world of rock.

MEDEIROS/LUCAS

MEDEIROS/LUCAS are Carlos Medeiros and Pedro Lucas, two Azoreans separated in age by thirty years and plotting to set their musical roots into motion. Medeiros brings the salt of the sea in his voice - a spell casting, mesmerizing, sharp and deep vehicle shaped to convey stories in a piercing and the most touching manner. Lucas creates the settings, adding youth and irreverence forged into the poignant finger picking of his guitars and the technological embroideries of his productions. They have released a trilogy of records: Mar Aberto (2015), Terra do Corpo (2016), and Sol de Março (2018). Their sound is disarmingly honest, raw at times. It sways melancholia and satire in tribal rhythms and ancient traditions while having both feet standing firmly in the present-day.

MANEL, THE ISLAND MAN

Insularity has its ways over identity. Born in São Miguel, Azores, The Island Man (the artistic alter ego for Manel Furtado) may have moved to the United States, but his songs have never completely left the imagination of an island marked by a special sense of belonging. With a unique voice that is drenched in a sweet raspy tone, Island Man drifts between rock and folk with clear American roots, confronting it with that soul essence and heart-felt emotions that are still very Portuguese. As a writer, he captures the essence of his soul, expressing his feelings with lyrics that increase heart-felt emotions. This folk/rock musician and his killer band has been performing and winning the hearts of fans throughout the USA, Canada, Azores, and Portugal.

UNITED BANDS PROJECT

The Portuguese Philharmonic bands of Fall River have a very rich history of providing music to community. The United Bands Project will bring together the Saint Anthony’s Band, Our Lady of Light Band, S.C. Mosteirense Band and Santa Cecilia Band in a special concert that will pay homage to American and Portuguese traditions.

VISUAL ARTS AND INSTALLATIONS

ALBERONERO

Alberonero began to experiment with graffiti at the age of fifteen and developed a very personal, brutal and childlike style of painting. In 2013, he graduated in Interior Design at the Milan Polytechnic, where he initiated his studies around the perception of color and became passionate about the emotional possibilities given by tonal combinations and the way visual arts could be used to reduce the world to color and sensations. He creates public art, pictorial and installation works all around the world and intervenes in natural environments with different media. His works come from an intimate dialogue with space, and a conception of art as a poetic and fundamental element of the landscape.

Alberonero has participated in major art events including the XXI Triennale di Milano International Exhibition, Farm Cultural Park, Altrove Festival, Art Basel Miami, and Big City Life. He has also done solo and group exhibitions in Italy, France, Ukraine, Spain, Florida, Germany, Argentina and Indonesia and has carried out participatory art projects and color workshops.

BRÁULIO AMADO and NICK SCHIARIZZI

Bráulio is a Graphic Designer and Illustrator from Portugal, currently living in New York City. He has worked at Pentagram NYC, Bloomberg Businessweek and Wieden+Kennedy. In 2017, he ventured out on his own, starting BAD Studio.

Nick is one of the founding members of CHERYL, a four-member, semi-anonymous, cat-masked artist collective based in Brooklyn, New York, known for its video art, museum installations, participatory events and dance parties.

Together they have created something truly unique - SSHH (Sixth Street Haunted House) a multi-purpose mutant art space, classroom and store in the East Village of NYC.

JONATHAN SALDANHA and CATARINA MIRANDA

Jonathan Uliel Saldanha lives in Porto and works with video art, music and movement. As a composer and musician, he has played several festivals and venues inside and outside of Portugal, such as Sónar, Primavera Sound, Issue Project Room, Elevate and OUT.FEST. His installations and performances have been featured in Serralves Museum, Accès(s) Festival, DañsFabrik, Palais de Tokyo or Culturgest (Portugal).

Catarina Miranda develops and presents projects in the area of performing arts and movement, crossing several artistic languages, from dance to voice, and set design to light. Her work centers on the reflection about the way we perceive and use our body as a vehicle of hypnagogic transformation and conscience.

ELIAN CHALI

Born and based in Cordoba, Argentina, Elian is a street artist, known for his beautifully painted, bright-colored abstract compositions on huge walls. His relationship with the streets began with adolescent tagging and although his background is in graphic design, as an artist he is self-taught. Elian’s work focuses on creating a dialogue with the urban fabric, letting the characteristics of the wall inform the piece. He identifies with urbanism and architecture more than muralism or graffiti. Architecture, climate and socio-politics are some of the factors that move Elian to compose through basic geometry and abstraction. Through photography and painting, Elian seeks to open discussion that goes from the current social problems, to the poetry of the habitat in which we live. With more than 10 collective shows and 3 solo shows, his artworks can be found in countries such as Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, the United States, France, England, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Peru, Dominican Republic, Russia and Uruguay.

WSDIA (WeShouldDoItAll)

Under the moniker WeShouldDoItAll (WSDIA), this contemporary design studio and collective explores the many possibilities of visual creation, destroying the idea that a designer must be constrained to a singular expertise. Exploring the idea of dynamic creation, they develop visual systems that can be presented at multiple scales. These solutions take the form of branding, spatial, environmental, interactive, or print projects.

RENÉ GAGNON

René is an internationally exhibited fine artist working in a variety of media that centers around graffiti, stencil, and contemporary urban art. He was born in 1971 and knew at an early age that he wanted to explore and define his artistic identity through street art. Under the alias SNO, he started exploring the rebellious nature of urban street art and later started reflecting on the bare nature of street art. He incorporates different techniques, unveiling the possibilities of mixing expressionism with urban art and developing a more subtle and elaborate fusion of styles. He paints graffiti using stencils, but he also draws, illustrates and works with wheat pasting throughout the East Coast.

CINEMA

RED BULL | DIOGO LIMA: AZ-RAP: Sons of the Wind

AZ-RAP: Sons of the Wind is a documentary about the hip hop culture of the Azores. The main characters are the artists of the archipelago and some of the faces that make up the cultural community of Azores, such as Sandro G., Fred Cabral, Fugitivo, LBC and António Pedro Lopes (co-artistic director of Tremor Festival). The film documents the stories behind some of the local neighborhoods, unveiling its particular cultural expression, as well as pointing out some of the main protagonists of a subculture that is deeply rooted in the Azores. AZ-RAP: Sons of the Wind reveals insularity as a key inspirational source, documenting some of the historical elements that have shaped this important artistic heritage. The film was produced by Red Bull Media House in 2017.

PAULO ABREU: I Don't Belong Here

I Don't Belong Here documents the creative process of the theater play that names it. The film follows a group of men and women who, despite Portuguese nationality, lived almost all their life in the USA and Canada, until they are unexpectedly deported to the Azores. A very timely film in today’s politically-charged climate.

DIANA VIDRASCU: Timeshores

Infrared photography film once served the military to see landscapes differently, detecting enemy lines and singling out the invisible presences of unnamed individuals. The three infrared photographs in the Timeshores series are displaying landscapes frozen in time, like fleeting moments from the geological age of volcanoes and unformed continents, long before any history was written. Together with its sound installation projected overhead, each image seems to emerge in the viewer’s eyes like the memory of a dream forgotten. Facing the photographic paper, the viewer is invited to search for her own details, at her own pace and pleasure, observing and listening within the loop of the frame.

MIGUEL C. TAVARES and JOSÉ ALBERTO GOMES: East Atlantic

“While people see land, they don't turn their eyes – they can't – from a small piece of sand, from a violet point that faints until it faints at the top of a wave. A point and the world is over. Our world is another one now.” (Raúl Brandão, The Unknown Islands)

Inspired by the trip made by Portuguese writer Raúl Brandão to Azores in 1924, Miguel C. Tavares and José Alberto Gomes traveled for 10 days inside a Corvo ship, departing from Lisbon and sailing along the islands of São Miguel, Faial, Terceira, Flores and Pico. With East Atlantic they present a visual piece that translates this imaginary into music and sound. A film-concert that has its main theme on the Azorean archipelago and its insular condition, East Atlantic plays with the boundaries between documentary and video art.