Conceived as a retreat and laboratory, our residency is hosted at La Serena, a boutique art hotel in Forte dei Marmi, Italy, known for its revolving curation of modern and contemporary artworks that animate the space each summer. Artworks flow through the hotel and residency programme, situating artists within an environment where living and making intersect with ease. 

Beyond the studio, residents are invited to connect with the surrounding community and cultural legacies, from the sculptural traditions of Pietrasanta to the luminous marble quarries of Carrara, while responding to the textures of the Tuscan landscape. For Ziad Al Najjar, solitude and stillness formed a catalyst for fresh figurative works that echo the drama of Renaissance painting while probing questions of selfhood and presence. For Pippa El-Kadhi Brown, shifting light, tactile textures, and deep-rooted histories seeped into her canvases, evolving into dreamlike portals where body forges with land. 

Here, we chat to the resident artists to discover how daily life at La Serena expanded the scope of their practices.

ZAN: The pine trees left an impression on me. These particular ones, called Pinus Pinea, have a remarkable umbrella-like form and rise to great heights. From the moment I spotted them from the plane to the day I left, their silhouettes were a constant source of fascination. They became a sort of subtle motif throughout my stay.

TA: How did you connect to the regional culture, history, and terrain?

ZAN: I sought out some of the region’s key historic sites, including the Medici Chapel in Florence. The grandeur of those spaces, combined with the density of ornamentation and the power of the figuration, was awe-inspiring. There’s something powerful that comes from standing before works that have survived for centuries; it stirs the imagination in ways that feel at-once humbling and energising. On a more everyday level, I also came to appreciate the culinary rituals, particularly the local obsession with white fish and paccheri pasta.

TA: Talk us through your practice, what have you been working on recently in terms of projects, thematic concerns, and materiality? How did this evolve during the residency?

ZAN: Before arriving in Forte, I had been experimenting with tattooing onto stretched latex, a process I first explored during the Sheikha Salama Emerging Artist Fellowship. It’s a departure from my usual approach to painting, but using a tattoo gun to lay ink on latex opened up a new, visceral way of mark-making. Interestingly, when I look at these works now, they seem to echo the drama of Renaissance painting, with its theatricality and intensity. Perhaps that connection was already forming subconsciously, and the residency in Italy only brought it further into focus.

TA: Any particular works you developed while there?

ZAN: Yes, I produced several pieces during the residency, a large pastel work on recycled fabric, alongside a series of portrait drawings on oversized sheets of paper. The body and head became central subjects. I was layering and overlapping figures, creating compositions that camouflaged forms within organic environments. These dense visual fields, where faces and limbs merge into landscapes, speak to ideas of presence, disappearance, and entanglement.

TA: Key takeaways from your time there?

ZAN: A sense of reconnection. I returned to feelings and spaces that were fundamental to my practice in its earliest stages, which reminded me of the importance of grounding myself in those origins.

TA: What’s next? Plans for the future?

ZAN: I’m wrapping up a body of work at the Sheikha Salama residency that continues my experiments with latex and ink. Later this year, I’ll present at Bayt Al Mamzar. Beyond that, I’m considering the development of a new body of work that could form the basis of a solo exhibition.

TA: What were the most interesting things to you about Forte and the surrounding areas? Any special experiences?

PEB: The landscape stayed with me. The horizon, the crashing waves, and then their retreat into the sand. The tangled, dense trees around the lake, full of wildlife and wildness, set against the town. The crowns of the Stone Pines, like giant umbrellas, and the aromatic scent of cypress trees. The billowing mountainscape over the town, shifting constantly with the light, gave everything a sense of being held within a larger presence. These textures and rhythms shaped the way I thought about and responded to painting. I cycled through wilderness and visited many galleries and museums. The Renaissance art, architecture, churches, food, and landscape made me feel constantly surrounded by layers of beauty, life and history. The shine of Carrara stone stayed in my mind, its smoothness and luminosity influencing how I thought about surface, depth, and light in painting.

TA: Talk us through your practice, what have you been working on recently in terms of projects, themes, and materials? How has this evolved during the residency?

PEB: I use painting as a vessel to return to fleeting memories, moments, and places. Guided by impulse, painting allows sensation to surface intuitively. I create works that hold traces of longing and wanderlust, where past, present, and (re)imagined worlds collide. During the residency, this process was deepened by the immediacy of a concentrated period. The Tuscan landscape with its shifting light, textures, and scents of the surroundings moved through the work simultaneously as it emerged. The paintings absorbed these impressions, becoming alive, romantic, bodily, and otherworldly.

TA: So what did you work on while in residence? 

PEB: I produced a series of paintings which draw upon living, breathing environments. The paintings are largely influenced by the vivacity of the Tuscan landscape, fleshy, tangled, and teeming with life. The body of work serves as a portal into ‘otherworlds’, dreamscapes built on a blend of fleeting experiences, where the body becomes the land, and where a kaleidoscope of impressions dance into being.  

TA: What’s next? Plans for the future?

PEB: I want to continue building on the idea of painting as a form of wanderlust, bringing fragments of different places, sensations, and histories into the studio, letting them collide and form new portals into these strange worlds. The residency gave me a wealth of experiences to draw upon, which will undoubtedly continue to pop up in future paintings.