Artist Ramona’s residency at Las Casas de la Selva, January 2026
Ramona’s residency project, “Community Ecologies: My neighbor is me, I am my neighbor“ grows out of a long-standing commitment to understanding human–nature relationships through slow, field-based practice. Working in watercolor and poetry, she approaches the rainforest not as scenery, but as a living community shaped by interdependence, reciprocity, and shared resilience.
At Las Casas de la Selva, her focus is on observation. Daily forest walks. Listening. Sketching. Taking notes. Paying attention to micro-ecologies and subtle interactions among species. Her practice draws equally from ecological training and artistic intuition, allowing scientific knowledge and creative expression to inform one another rather than compete.
The questions guiding her work are deceptively simple:
How do rainforest communities sustain one another?
How does the more-than-human nourish, support, and coexist?
What can these systems teach us about our own planetary interdependence?
Ramona’s background in ecology, natural resource management, and restoration has given her deep experience within academic science. At the same time, she is acutely aware of its limitations. Scientific knowledge, as it is often communicated, remains inaccessible to many and shaped by narrow epistemologies. Her work seeks another route. Art becomes a mode of science communication that is human, embodied, and relational.
This residency is also a preparation.
Beginning in 2026, Ramona plans to undertake a visual narrative storytelling project during a walk around the world, traversing five continents. See this link for more: www.thecollectivecanvas.org She will carry this methodology with her: painting, writing, observing, and documenting community ecologies across vastly different landscapes and cultures. The artistic development she is cultivating now will guide how she tells those stories later.
Her proposed outputs include a series of paintings accompanied by poems, field notes, and an online exhibition, as well as a small workshop centered on observation and reciprocity in artistic practice. But beyond deliverables, what is being formed is a way of working that can move across borders without extracting from place.
Ramona’s website: https://www.ramonamraz.com/
Las Casas de la Selva offers an ideal beginning. Not as a backdrop, but as a collaborator. A place where slowing down is not a luxury, but a necessity, and where attention itself becomes a form of care. See here for more info: https://eyeontherainforest.org/artist-residencies-at-las-casas-de-la-selva/
Above: Some of Ramona’s work, Jan 2026
Ramona is actively seeking funding for her walk around the world. Please make contact if you are able to help in any way.
