“Fall River - This small, post-industrial city is becoming a fertile ground for artists”

^{in The Boston Globe - Cate McQuaid}




Fabric’s program was organized around six days, spanning two weekends: October 5, 6, 7, 12, 13 and 14, as it navigated between three cities: Providence, RI, New Bedford, MA, and Fall River, MA.

It synchronistically focused on three artistic areas: visual arts and architecture; music and sounds; commensality and encounter. The festival presented 46 artists working in music, performance, food and visual arts. It involved local cultural agents in showing, mapping, and building from the narratives of the region, its spaces, and traditions, celebrating their communities and diversity.

The festival kicked off in Providence, with two educational talks at Rhode Island School of Design, one by Nuno Pimenta, our artist-in-resident for the coming year, and the other by our current resident artist, Allyson Viera. Later that day, at Courtland Club, Berlin-based artist chef Caique Tizzi, seduced guests with his Tropical Anthology: a dinner based on the diasporic movement of foods like the pineapple. The following night, Fabric presented a music program at Machines with Magnets. Baby;baby explores warmed the crowd up with their unique brand of playful, experimental pop; Surma was a dreamlike explosion of both sound and performance; Isabella got everyone dancing and DJ Lycox of Príncipe Discos kept the party going until 1am.

Saturday, was the end of Fabric’s Providence debut with the screening of Supernatural by Jorge Jacome & André e. Teodósio, at RISD Museum - Metcalf Auditorium. The second weekend began in New Bedford at the Whaling Museum for an evening of film and music. The night opened with the poetics of Natalia Correia, personified through Catarina Gonçalves, Matria: a short film about the great poet as seen through a generation of women. To follow, New Bedford experienced the phenomenon that is WE SEA, an Azorean indie rock band from São Miguel. Fabric also teamed up with. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth also collaborated with the festival to present this show in the form of financial support.

On Friday 13th, and in true Fabric fashion, the festival arrived in Fall River: a place it never really left and forever calls home. The night opened with the Hyperballads exhibition at The Ignition Space at Gather, on 44 Troy St, gathering works by Allyson Viera, Beatriz Brum, Eva Papagarmariti, Gil Ferrão, Goncalo Preto, Horácio Frutuoso, Nadia Belerique, Sónia Almeida and Yuli Yamagata. During the opening, guests were greeted with Cape Verdean inspired cocktails from Michael Silva, of BAS PVD. The exhibition was displayed until November 18th.

The night continued with an installation-performance dinner hosted at Portugal Marketplace. Commissioned by the festival, On the other side, resulted from a collaboration between the nonlinear visual works of Sónia Almeida, the somatic sharings of André e. Teodósio and the exquisite delicacies of Chef Robert Andreozzi. Five jacquard weavings, created by Almeida, hung in unison and inspired the five-course meal prepared by Andreozzi. Teodósio expanded the paintings in space through an intense performance.

The final day of the festival commenced with Unfixed Concrete Ideal, a collective show curated by artists Allyson Vieira and Ben Sloat at Fall River’s Government Center, which was displayed until November 18th. The show had both international and local artists, along with a noise performance by Trisomy 9. Across the city to Bristol Community College was Allyson Viera’s unveiling of Repose, a new public art project commissioned for the campus, displayed through mid-November.

In a first-time collaboration with The Zeiterion, Fabric presented Gisela João, a central figure and one of the most exciting interpreters in fado music. Hosted at the Margaret L. Jackson Arts Center - Bristol Community College, she not only sang in the traditional form of Fado, but we witnessed her as a captivating storyteller, an interpreter of songs written by others, and an artist who writes and produces herself.

Fabric teamed up with FRACC - Fall River Arts & Culture Coalition to organize Fall River’s Open Studios. Opening up to the city and its creative agents, spaces, and practices, the ten participating venues organized special activities over two days and gathered around 500 visitors. Fabric gathered important support for the organization and funding of this edition between sponsors, institutional partners, collaborative partners, and media partners. This capacity confirms the Festival’s growing artistic and institutional relevance on both sides of the Atlantic, with significant support coming directly from the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the FLAD Foundation.