COLLABORATIONS AND PARTNERSHIPS

COLLABORATIONS & EXCHANGES

El Nido’s work extends through a small number of carefully developed relationships — each grounded in dialogue, exchange, and a shared commitment to artistic inquiry.

Through both short-term partnerships and exhibition, performance, and event-based collaborations, these connections create bridges between Los Angeles and broader creative communities beyond, allowing ideas, practices, conversations, and works to move across different contexts in a considered and intentional way.

While exhibitions remain central to the platform, El Nido also hosts staged readings, performances, gatherings, lectures, screenings, concerts, and interdisciplinary events that encourage slower forms of engagement and conversation. Recent programming has included collaborations with HILMA. - through staged readings, as well as the production of intimate musical events such as pianist and composer Anthony Cardella’s concert programming in Northern Italy.

Alongside exhibitions and research-driven programming, El Nido also supports a select number of online and in-person courses focused on writing, literature, poetry, close reading, and contemplative learning practices. These ongoing exchanges further expand the platform’s engagement with language, thought, atmosphere, and creative inquiry — cultivating spaces where conversation, reflection, and interdisciplinary thinking can unfold organically over time.

FROM LOS ANGELES TO THE ITALIAN ALPS

EL NIDO JOINS THE MA/ARTE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK

(2025-2028 BIENNIUM)

EL NIDO IS PARTNERING WITH ZERO GRAVITÀ VILLA CERNIGLIARO (ITALY) FOR THE 2026-2027 / 2027 - 2028 BIENNIUM

EL NIDO HAS BEEN SELECTED AS A KEY "ARTISTIC OUTPOST" IN A NEW GLOBAL NETWORK DEDICATED TO INDEPENDENT RESEARCH, ENVIRONMENTAL ART, AND FEMALE LEADERSHIP. THIS COLLABORATION, CENTERED AROUND THE 4TH EDITION OF THE MA/DONNE PROJECT, AIMS TO BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN ISOLATED CREATIVE SANCTUARIES AND THE GLOBAL ART SCENE.

THIS NETWORK REDEFINES "INTERNATIONALIZATION" FROM THE BOTTOM UP. INSTEAD OF LOOKING TO MAJOR COMMERCIAL HUBS, WE ARE CONNECTING INDEPENDENT, FEMALE-LED SPACES—OUR ARTISTIC OUTPOSTS—THAT PRIORITIZE CREATIVE "CARE" OVER MASS CONSUMPTION.

THROUGH THE MA/DONNE PROJECT, EL NIDO COMMUNITY WILL ENGAGE IN A TWO-YEAR CULTURAL EXCHANGE WITH THE ITALIAN ALPS, FOCUSING ON SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS, ENVIRONMENTAL DIALOGUE, AND THE RESILIENCE OF INDEPENDENT ART SPACES. WE ARE BUILDING A BRIDGE WHERE THE "NEST" OF LOS ANGELES MEETS THE "HISTORICAL GRAVITY" OF ITALY

PARTICIPATION

2025 — THIRD EDITION, MA/DONNE ARTE
VICTORIA CHAPMAN — SOUNDSCAPE

2026 — FOURTH EDITION, MA/DONNE ARTE
CO-CURATORS: CHICCA BENEDETTO, VICTORIA CHAPMAN, ANDREA GARDINI, CRISTINA GHETTI, CATERINA GUALCO, MIROSLAVA HÀJEK, ANGELO PANTALEO, MARIA ROSA PIVIDORI, GERARDO ROSATO, LORENA SMANIOTTO, LUCA TAGLIETTI, ROSY TOGACI GAUDIANO.

2026 — FOURTH EDITION, MA/DONNE ARTE
BETHAN DEAR — PERFORMANCE ARTIST, DIRECTOR, WRITER (VIDEO PERFORMANCE)

COLLABORATION WITH CASA REGIS: CENTER FOR CULTURE AND CONTEMPORARY ART, ITALY

TRAVELING EXHIBITION: PHOTOGRAPHY INTO SCULPTURE - AN HOMAGE AND AN UPDATE CURATED BY L MIKELLE STANDBRIDGE

PHOTOGRAPHY INTO SCULPTURE — AN HOMAGE AND AN UPDATE

A TRAVELING GROUP EXHIBITION

DATES: APRIL 4 - MAY 16, 2026 - EL NIDO - LOS ANGELES

FORMERLY OCTOBER 2025 - WINTER 2026: CASA REGIS: CENTER FOR CULTURE AND CONTEMPORARY ART, MOSSO, ITALY

FEATURING: BENNIE FLORES ANSELL, ROBERTA TOSCANO, FABIOLA UBANI, OONA HYLAND
DAWN SURRATT, SILVIA GAFFURINI, L. MIKELLE STANDBRIDGE, AND OLGA CALDAS

CURATED BY L. MIKELLE STANDBRIDGE

STAGED BY VICTORIA CHAPMAN FOR EL NIDO

On June 6, 2026, El Nido by VC Projects along with hilma. will present a staged reading of Nick Silver Can’t Sleep by Janice Kerbel, directed by Rhian Rees.

The reading will be presented by HILMA., a newly formed theatre company based between Los Angeles and Toronto, whose work explores contemporary performance, language, atmosphere, and experimental forms of storytelling.

Presented within the intimate setting of El Nido, the evening continues the space’s ongoing interest in interdisciplinary dialogue and the intersection between visual art, theatre, literature, and live performance.

Villa Magnani | Campiglia Cervo, Italy
Collaboration with El Nido & Villa Emma

As part of our ongoing collaboration with Villa Emma and Casa Regis, we are pleased to include Villa Magnani as a site-specific extension. During the summer retreat, participating artists are invited to spend time on the estate, engaging the landscape through observation, research, and creative practice across disciplines.

Located in Campiglia Cervo in Northern Italy, Villa Magnani is a nineteenth-century park shaped by the legacy of landscape architects Marcellino and Giuseppe Roda. Its grounds—marked by winding paths, grottos, and mature trees—offer a contemplative environment for artistic inquiry.

july 25, 2026 at 4 pm | CONCERT and art exhibition

FEATURING ANTHONY CARDELLA, PERFORMING CHOPIN AND NEW WORKS FROM THE VILLA’S HISTORICal PIANO also, on display, linda zambolin and francesco tori, once upon a time - incarnation of place, hand-painted and waxed photographs

ARTIST RETREATS

VILLA EMMA | ARTIST RETREAT | NORTHERN ITALY

Originally designed to host artists engaged with Casa Regis: Center for Culture and Contemporary Art, Villa Emma is a treasure in its own right.

Set within the quiet beauty of Valle Cervo—“Deer Valley”—the villa’s historic architecture and surrounding landscape create an immediate sense of presence and inspiration.

From the moment I arrived, I felt it: a place that both holds you and invites something new to emerge within your creative practice.

The Hide | Artist Retreat | cotswolds, England

Just on the outskirts of the Gloucestershire town of Nailsworth sits The Hide, nestled within the Cotswolds AONB.

This is no ordinary getaway. It offers a quiet shift in pace for those seeking a change of scene, while also serving as an ideal setting for artists and creatives in search of inspiration.

ONLINE COURSES

Bookwomen I: Medieval Women “Lewd, Feeble & Frail” (part 1)

CLOSE READING with stacie vos | ENCLOSURE ACADEMY
meet online - Tuesdays from June 2 — mid july

times: 2 pm CDt / Noon PST / 3 pm EST / 8 pm BST UK)

This portion of the course explores women readers, writers, owners, and makers of books during the medieval period, with an emphasis on England and English translations of texts from other languages.

Figures discussed include both poetic creations and historical individuals — from the Wife of Bath, Margaret Beaufort, Jane Scrope, Juliana Berners, and Margery Kempe to Julian of Norwich, Margaret Paston, Hroswitha of Gandersheim, and Christine de Pizan.

Through excerpts, manuscripts, and medieval objects, the course investigates what it meant to be a woman reader in the Middle Ages.

enrollment Contact: stacie.vos@aya.yale.edu

biography: Stacie Vos is the founder and director of the Enclosure Group, which first formed in the spring of 2020 when Vos called together a group of visual artists, writers, and scholars who were exploring various definitions and images of enclosure—from the anchoress’s cell and the enclosed rural lands of England—to the camera, the projection booth, and the confessional—in their work. 

Vos’s own work on enclosure began with her dissertation, completed in 2021, called Englishing the Virgin: Enclosure, Dissemination, and the Early English Book. The research group became a vital community during the writing of this project, which was all done during the lockdown period caused by the global pandemic that began in the late months of 2019. 

Vos is now at work on a book on Hope Emily Allen and other pioneering female medievalists.

Vos is committed to fusing creative, archival and social work with her scholarship and teaching of English and Writing. She sees the Enclosure Group as a means for public outreach, interdisciplinary humanistic research, and community formation across creative, academic, and social spheres that might not otherwise intersect.  

mimicries- a seminar (part 1)

CLOSE READING with jeffrey stuker | THE ENCLOSURE ACADEMY

Meet online at 6PM Central European Time / 9 am pst / 12 noon est

From sympathetic magic to the semiconductor. A two-part seminar with Jeffrey Stuker, casting a sideward light on the artificial nature of contemporary life through readings of Frazier, Mauss, Woolf, Benjamin, Caillois, Adorno, Seghers, Lacan, Turing, Fanon, Bhabha, Taussig, Johnson, and others.

This course has been assembled from the research I have been conducting for my writings in Los Angeles Review of Books, Effects, Bricks from The Kiln, and The White Review over the past few years. As I re-work these essays into a book-length project, I am excited to explore new connections and new resonances with you.

Organized through the Enclosure Group, with limited slots available, so sign up now!

enrollment Contact: stacie.vos@aya.yale.edu

biography: Jeffrey Stuker was born in Colorado in 1979. He received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and an MFA from Yale University, where he also taught from 2006 to 2013. Stuker is currently a coeditor of the journal Effects and the director of the Seeld Library, a project bringing together a community of thinkers whose scholarly and artistic practices explore the phenomenon of second nature—the representation of socially constructed values as if they were the outcome of an inevitable biological process. His artistic practice is concerned with the synthetic characteristics of seemingly organic processes. His particular focus on mimicry—as we see it in nature, used as a strategy for the survival of certain species—points to resemblances between the power of the electronic image to captivate and the lures used by animals to avoid capture in the jaws of their predators. Producing extremely accurate computer-generated imagery that he infuses with historical, scientific, or industrial references, Stuker exemplifies through his films an age of images without actual referents, creating a point of contact between the subject the work depicts and the technology that made the depiction possible. His work has been exhibited at Garden, Los Angeles (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018); Hunter/Whitfield, London (2016); and Full Haus, Los Angeles (2015).

A Premodern Writing Workshop with Stacie Vos | enclosure academy

This course will introduce participants to premodern forms and habits of writing such as the keeping of commonplace books, the creation of scribal editions, and the writing of creative autobiographical essays. Reading medieval and early modern manuscripts and essay collections from Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne and Virginia Woolf, students will come away from the course with new models for developing and organizing thoughts by hand.

dates:

Europe/East Coast US: Saturdays the 11th and 18th of July at 2 pm-5pm BST/9-NOON EST

California etc.: Tuesday and Thursday July 14 & 16 - 5 pm-8pm BST/9 am-NOON PST/NOON-3 EST

enrollment Contact: stacie.vos@aya.yale.edu

biography: Stacie Vos is the founder and director of the Enclosure Group, which first formed in the spring of 2020 when Vos called together a group of visual artists, writers, and scholars who were exploring various definitions and images of enclosure—from the anchoress’s cell and the enclosed rural lands of England—to the camera, the projection booth, and the confessional—in their work. 

Vos’s own work on enclosure began with her dissertation, completed in 2021, called Englishing the Virgin: Enclosure, Dissemination, and the Early English Book. The research group became a vital community during the writing of this project, which was all done during the lockdown period caused by the global pandemic that began in the late months of 2019. 

Vos is now at work on a book on Hope Emily Allen and other pioneering female medievalists.

Vos is committed to fusing creative, archival and social work with her scholarship and teaching of English and Writing. She sees the Enclosure Group as a means for public outreach, interdisciplinary humanistic research, and community formation across creative, academic, and social spheres that might not otherwise intersect.  

MASTERCLASS IN EDITING POETRY

ROSANNA MCCLURE

The Art of Redrafting 

MEET ONLINE - Sunday, June 28, 2026 | From 9:00 – 11:30 am Los Angeles time | From 5:00 - 7:30 pm UK time

This 2.5 hour masterclass explores the art of redrafting through a practical examination of an award-winning poet’s early and final drafts, opening into a wider discussion about our own creative practices.

The workshop includes a mixture of small group and whole-class discussion and is intended for experienced writers rather than beginners.

A wonderful opportunity for poets interested in process, refinement, and the deeper architecture of language.

Link to enroll: https://rosanna-mcglone.sumupstore.com/product/poetry-masterclass-28th-june-5pm-7-30pm-bst

The class is based on Rosanna McClure’s Amazon #1 bestselling book The Process of Poetry, featuring interviews with fifteen of the UK’s leading poets discussing their approaches to revision and rewriting, followed by the Australian sequel The Making of a Poem.

The Process of Poetry is included on university reading lists throughout the UK and held in the libraries of major American universities including Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.

Rosanna has taught this widely acclaimed class for numerous organizations including The Poetry School, The Society of Women Writers and Journalists, and as part of an Arts Council project.