WHO WE ARE
MA UMI RESIDENCIES is a self-funded and not-for-profit, international site for artists and researchers. Our guests concentrate on a wide range of specialisations, disciplines and practices, but come together to live and work in the Northern Peninsula of Ishigaki Island, Japan. The residency is intended to create a lively platform; to collect, discuss, and experiment with the land, the ocean, and nearby communities.
Valerie Portefaix
Co-founder / Director
Valérie Portefaix is an artist and architect. She is the principal and co-founder of MAP Office with Laurent Gutierrez in Hong Kong (1995-2021) and MA Umi Residencies in Ishigaki (2022). After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Art and a Master of Architecture, She earned a PhD of Urbanism from University Pierre Mendes-France and has been Adjunct Professor at the School of Architecture, Hong Kong University, where she taught Thesis and Coastal Ecologies, Master of Architecture.
Emma Gutierrez
Co-founder / Adviser
Emma Gutierrez is co-founder of MA Umi Residencies. She received a Bachelor in Art at Concordia University, Montreal (2021). Her research interest lies within the field of food anthropology, including experimental cooking and sustainable farming. Through 2021-22, she has worked as an assistant in two private kitchens in Hong Kong, as well as various global, organic farms.
Manami Fujita
Co-founder / Coordinator
MA Umi Residencies is managed by Manami Fujita. Born and raised in United States until high school, she later moved to Japan and majored in Intercultural Communication at International Christian University. Thereafter, she spent 33 years living and working in Hong Kong, adding experience in the hotel and fitness club management industries. She has also been an active paddler and committee member of the Hong Kong Japanese Dragon Boat Club for 30 years.
WHAT WE OFFER
In order to support their research, participants will receive complimentary lodging in a large private studio for a duration of two weeks, along with airport pickup and convenient transportation within our village. Additionally, a production stipend can be provided, the amount of which to be determined through discussion based on the project.
MA UMI RESIDENCIES questions the nature of knowledge incorporated, produced, and transmitted by multiple forms of practice. Split between three locales, residents are encouraged to critically explore and celebrate Ishigaki’s natural, insular environment in all its complexities. At the end of the program, guests are expected to present on their work and residency experience in the form of a public presentation and discussion.
MA UMI | MAP Ocean
In the age of climate change, the ocean is a fundamental aspect of research, integral to the planet’s future development. Thus, an important motive behind transforming MAP Office into MA Umi–and moving from Hong Kong to Ishigaki–is to explore the concept of marine and coastal landscape in situ. Responding to the on-going global crisis of climate change, our ambition is to create a sustainable space, in both ecological and economic terms, that will facilitate shared and produced, biological, environmental, and productive meanings.
MAP Office’s contemporary practice combined a diversity of subjects and media that slipped boundlessly from one context to another–or deliberately from one island to another. Indeed, over the past 25 years, MAP Office developed a research-based practice that critically observed the complex development of Hong Kong and the extended Pearl River Delta region of Mainland China. First approaching the territory at large through its most recognisable densities of urban life and infrastructure, we gradually shifted our exploration to the region’s invisible islands and hidden communities. These include the rapidly disappearing fishermen’s culture and their remarkable knowledge about the edible and medicinal benefits of seaweed. Recent local, radical political shifts, as well as risks associated with global climate transformations, encouraged our determination to relocate.
This new base is in Ishigaki Island, one of the southernmost islands in the Yaeyama Archipelago of Japan. Here, we will channel a life of academic research into creating a research centre and artistic retreat.