Anne Marie Sampaio, Lucy Cordes Engelman and Paz Ortúzar present ‘AND THE SAP WILL FLOW UPWARDS’ —the first project that was selected following the RAAT Open Call earlier this year.

“ ‘The sap will flow upwards from the roots, through its vitality, far and wide, meadow and plant will don their foliage …’ Hadewijch, the mystic and poet, wrote these words sometime in the 1200’s while she was living in the Low Countries, now known as Belgium and the Netherlands. Inspired by the Beguines, women that gathered in outsider spiritual communities during medieval Europe, artists Anne Marie Sampaio, Lucy Cordes Engelman and Paz Ortúzar, will be coming together to work collectively from July 6-25 in RAAT. They will approach the laboratory, ‘SAP LAB’, as a space to consider transparency, fluidity, subversive power and resistance, and the ways that artists’ practices can contaminate each other’s while continually working towards dismantling structures of oppression. In times where ‘contamination’ relates most obviously to the spreading of a virus, they’ll focus on other more liberatory senses of the word. Together with other artists, intersectional feminist collectives and researchers, Paz, Lucy, and Anne Marie propose the physical and virtual space of ‘SAP LAB’ as a sharing space of cohabitation, dialogue and collaborative creation.”

Due to COVID-19, the artists invite you to participate with them online via their website https://saplab.hotglue.me/ and instagram @raat_antwerpen. Or email them at visitsaplab@gmail.com to book an in person visit between July 11 to 25.

RAAT is an open city lab in the centre of Antwerp where emerging creative talent can develop and present their work. Initiated by AAIR in collaboration with Kavka.

Artists: Anne Marie Sampaio, Lucy Cordes Engelman, Paz Ortúzar