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Short-Term, Themed Residency Programs for Artists, Art Historians, and Researchers – All Dates in 2026 & 2027

Type: Residencies, Workshops, Exchanges [View all]
Posted by: Arquetopia Foundation & International Artist Residency, Puebla, Mexico – Oaxaca, Mexico – Cusco, Peru
Deadline: Mon, June 15th, 2026

Short-Term, Themed Residency Programs for Artists, Art Historians, and Researchers – All Dates in 2026 & 2027

Arquetopia Foundation & International Artist Residency, Puebla, Mexico – Oaxaca, Mexico – Cusco, Peru

 

Apply Now through Monday, June 15, 2026.

Spaces are limited. Residency applications are evaluated for selection as they are received.

Website: https://arquetopia.org

E-mail info@arquetopia.org for more information.

 

 

Now well into its 16th year, Arquetopia Foundation is a multiple award-winning nonprofit arts and cultural foundation with a social scope that is internationally established on three continents. Our mission emphasizes critical thinking, a commitment to reciprocity, and a sense of ethics at the core of all artistic practices. Our customized, professional International Artist-in-Residence Programs https://arquetopia.org/open-calls are among the largest and most renowned worldwide. All of our multinational artist residency programs are unique, with an array of content anchored in local knowledge, critical academic perspectives, and a solid structure of collaborations with prominent cultural institutions, renowned experts, and notable artists. Our residency sites are located in three distinct cultural regions selected for their historical importance, influence and artistic contribution to the world: Puebla and Oaxaca in Mexico, and Cusco in Peru.

Through the years, we have successfully created a generous space where different perspectives meet and address important questions on the legacy of art history and the current state of the world. We are proud to have established through our multiple residency programs a generous and culturally diverse space by hosting every year artists, scholars, and researchers from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Our experience has been enriched by the multiplicity of perspectives of more than 1200 of our resident artists and writers, age 20 to 92, who have come from all regions of the world and more than 110 countries. Our residency programs offer competitive professional opportunities for emerging and mid-career, national and international artists, designers, curators, art historians, art educators, writers, journalists, and cultural researchers age 20 and over.

Arquetopia is distinguished worldwide for its array of unique residency programs with substantial content. Our residency spaces function exclusively for productive art professionals, writers, and researchers and include structured, informative programs; a network of collaborative workspaces, institutions, and studios; and personalized project support.

 

TESTIMONIALS FROM OUR OUTSTANDING PAST RESIDENT ARTISTS & WRITERS

For profiles, feedback and testimonials from many of our outstanding past resident artists, art historians, and writers, don’t miss this page on our website: Arquetopia Foundation: Our Resident Artists  https://arquetopia.org/our-resident-artists

 

 

Arquetopia Foundation is now welcoming applications for the following residency programs in the majestic central historic district of Puebla, Mexico; the open countryside of Oaxaca, Mexico; and the Sacred Valley of the Andes of Cusco, Peru, for all dates in 2026 and 2027.

Click on each link below for program info on our website:

 

SHORT-TERM, THEMED RESIDENCY PROGRAMS FOR ARTISTS, ART HISTORIANS, AND RESEARCHERS – DATES IN 2026 & 2027:

https://www.arquetopia.org/special-themed-residency-programs/

 

A. Immersive Learning Program #1, Botany and the Mapping of Ignorance (Puebla)
This 2-week program encompasses a comprehensive structure aimed at enriching participants’ understanding of herbalist techniques and local plant knowledge, including their historical significance, all approached through the lens of agnotology. Participants will engage in 8 hours of instructional sessions, complemented by guided tours and visits to prominent botanical gardens, markets, and local stores in Puebla.

 

In addition to these immersive learning experiences, attendees will partake in 12 hours of Spanish language instruction, comprising 6 hours of grammar and 6 hours of immersive on-site language practice. Cultural tours, totaling 4 hours, will provide further insights into the local flora, with academic visits to gardens, markets, and relevant sites. Furthermore, participants will benefit from 2 hours of artistic mentoring sessions tailored to their creative development. Activities are thoughtfully designed to foster intense creative work and artistic dialogue, with participants expected to allocate self-directed studio hours as part of their weekly schedule. Reading materials are provided in English, while workshop instruction is conducted in Spanish, ensuring a rich and immersive learning experience for all involved.

 

 

B. Immersive Learning Program #2, Day of the Dead: Speaking, Tasting, Creating (Puebla)

The Arquetopia Immersive Learning Program, Day of the Dead: Speaking, Tasting, Creating is a 2-week intensive experience designed to provide competitive professional opportunities for emerging and mid-career artists, curators, art historians, and students aged 20 and above from around the world. This distinctive program offers critical perspectives on the representation of death in Mexico as a foundational element of national identity. By examining the mythologies surrounding its origins and their reinterpretation over time, the program equips participants with analytical tools to understand the performative nature of Day of the Dead rituals, engaging with emotional portrayals, food as ephemeral art, material culture, and the evolving historical significance of death in the construction of identity. Participants will contextualize their own practices by learning bread making as a form of ephemeral art directly linked to the creation of ofrendas (altars), a central element of Day of the Dead celebrations in Puebla.

 
This 2-week program includes 8 hours of instruction in ephemeral Day of the Dead culinary art techniques, including the preparation of Pan de Muerto, symbolic design elements, and the edible dimension of the altar. Participants will have the opportunity to join guided visits to traditional bakeries, communal ovens, markets, and local altars. Alongside these artistic and culinary endeavors, attendees will engage in 12 hours of Spanish language lessons, divided into 6 hours of grammar and 6 hours of immersive on-site language practice. They will embark on food tours (4 hours total) to explore the regional culinary landscape and spend 6 hours on academic visits to museums, cemeteries, and relevant cultural sites. Participants will also benefit from 2 hours of artistic mentoring sessions.

 

 

C. Immersive Learning Program #3, The Power of Protest: Political Posters and the Art of Resisting (Puebla)

Arquetopia’s Immersive Learning Program: The Power of Protest approaches silkscreen printing as both a material and critical practice. Participants produce their own protest images while engaging questions of ethics, representation, circulation, and labor. The program considers how graphic art can contribute to forms of resistance that do not rely on exploitation or extraction, and how visual production might move beyond symbolic gesture toward accountable, situated, and politically engaged practices.

 

This 2-week program offers a comprehensive structure aimed at deepening participants’ engagement with political image-making, silkscreen printing, and the visual languages of resistance, approached through critical perspectives on power, representation, and agnotology. Participants complete 8 hours of instructional sessions, complemented by guided visits to cultural sites, print workshops, markets, and public spaces in Puebla that reflect local histories of protest and graphic production.

 

Activities are designed to foster sustained creative work and critical dialogue. Participants are expected to dedicate self-directed studio time as part of their weekly schedule. Reading materials are provided in English, while workshop instruction is conducted in Spanish, creating an immersive environment that connects technical practice with critical inquiry.

 

 

D. Guided Art Program: My First Arquetopia Residency (Puebla)

My First Arquetopia Residency is a 2-week introductory program designed exclusively for applicants ages 20 to 25 who are beginning, rethinking, or formalizing their artistic practice. It is conceived for emerging or first-time residents who wish to define or re-frame the foundations of their work through contextual immersion and guided observation. Rather than assuming that a practice is already formed, the program treats the act of beginning as a conceptual, ethical, and material problem: to locate where one is speaking from, to identify what one is reproducing or resisting, and to understand how one’s work participates in broader historical, social, and institutional narratives. Throughout the residency, participants move between close looking and collective discussion, between the museum and the street, and between archival knowledge and lived environments in Puebla, in order to sharpen their sense of intention, method, and responsibility within their future work.

 

The program includes guided visits to key institutional collections such as Museo Bello, Museo de la Revolución, Museo del Alfeñique, and the Biblioteca Palafoxiana, alongside different on-site visits that examine how place, power, and narrative intersect in public and institutional space.

 

Total hour activities include in-situ class (4 hours), individual mentoring sessions (2 hours), collection visits (4 hours), academic visits (5 hours), plus individual studio hours, offering a structured yet reflective framework for participants to articulate the conceptual, ethical, and methodological pillars of their work.

 

 

E. Community-Engaged Practice Guided Art Program: Unmaking Power, Remaking Worlds (Puebla, Oaxaca, Cusco)

Unmaking Power, Remaking Worlds is a 2-week program designed as an active cultural ecosystem where art, knowledge, and community practices intersect to foster new ways of thinking and creating. Rooted in situated knowledge, it emphasizes reciprocity and collective learning, inviting participants to recognize local knowledges as living technologies that shape how we inhabit and transform the world. By linking academic and community spaces, participants experience how culture not only sustains history but also becomes a force for social transformation.

 

Participants engage in academic visits, site-based mentoring, studio practice, and collaborative sessions with local institutions such as ARPA BUAP. The program integrates reflection and action, moving between guided research, direct encounters with the local context, and structured critical dialogue.

 

A central component is the Movilizatorio, an experiential format developed by Arquetopia. Here, participants walk through the city and its cultural fabric, transforming the territory itself into a classroom. The Movilizatorio connects cultural and productive sectors, activating knowledge in motion and highlighting everyday practices as sources of innovation, ethical reflection, and collective learning.

 

 

 

HOW TO APPLY

Visit the Arquetopia Foundation website at https://arquetopia.org

E-mail us at info@arquetopia.org

Complete and submit the Arquetopia Artist-in-Residence Online Application Form https://arquetopia.org/residency-application, following the instructions on the page.

Following selection, applicants are notified immediately via e-mail.

 

Arquetopia is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our diverse local and international community. Arquetopia’s resident artist and staff backgrounds vary in all aspects. Arquetopia offers access to its programs and activities without regard to race, color, gender or gender expression, national origin, age, religion, creed, or sexual orientation.

 

Main Website: https://arquetopia.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arquetopia

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/arquetopia

Posted on Mon, May 18th, 2026
Expires on Mon, June 15th, 2026

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