Benito Mayor Vallejo and Zadie Xa
Fire Station Residency
2020–2025
Benito Mayor Vallejo, born 1981 in Spain, currently lives and works in London. He uses drawing, painting and sculpture to create portraits that explore personal histories, psychological and emotional states. The pictures produced often include topical local and world events. His work incorporates references from art history, satrical cartoons, sports and traditional Spanish folklore.
Zadie Xa, born 1983 in Vancouver, Canada, uses live performance, video, painting and textiles to question how cultures inform identities and notions of self. Her layered costume works are sites for exploring personal cultural histories that stitch together personally relevant imagery sourced from music, digital space, fashion and art history. Zadie has developed a system of personalised symbols that propose entirely new images and objects, creating a personal visual language for articulating nuanced Asian identity narratives, which are frequently situated within fantastical or supernatural realms.
Benito and Zadie have been working collaboratively since 2016. In 2019 they developed various performances which were presented at the 58th Venice Biennale performance programme ‘Meetings on Art’ and at Art Night London 2019. These performance projects later manifested into a touring exhibition, presented at Yarat Contemporary Art, Baku; Tramway, Glasgow in 2019; and the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, in 2020.
Fire Station Residency 2020-2025
The Fire Station Residency provides secure, practical, work/live studio space, and a programme of artist support and professional development for five years. Based in the heart of East London, the residency allows artists more time to concentrate on the development of their work and careers, and less time working to survive. Artists were selected by Anthea Hamilton, artist and current Acme work/live studio resident; Judith Carlton, Director of Southwark Park Galleries; Paul Bayley, Head of Residencies & Awards, Acme; and Charlie Coffey, Programme Manager, Residencies & Awards, Acme.