Vinicius with the laser engraving machine, June 2026
Country: Canada
Residency period: May 29 - June 26, 2026
Public presentation: June 26 at 13:00 pm, space 517
Residency project: Anima in Motion: Expanded Print and the Moving Image
As an interdisciplinary artist and immigrant working across animation and print media, my practice is rooted in the Latin American diaspora and informed by cross-cultural research. This residency project builds upon my Fulbright Research Award, Expanding the Animation Film – Cross-Cultural Exchange in Montréal and Canada, extending that research through a studio-based, process-driven printmaking practice.
Anima in Motion positions print not as a secondary record of animation, but as an expanded contemporary medium historically intertwined with the emergence of the moving image. Drawing from nineteenth-century print culture and early cinematic experiments, such as lithographs and optical prints produced by Ackermann & Co. (London) and Mathias Trentsensky, the project examines how motion, sequencing, and visual illusion circulated through printed multiples, animation sheets, parlor toys, and ephemera. These works translated movement into reproducible, tactile forms, foregrounding print as a time-based and experiential medium.
The project engages printmaking principles of layering, registration, seriality, and variation, as structural equivalents to animation’s temporal logic. Through a playful, magic-realist approach, Anima in Motion explores how print works can activate duration, repetition, and perceptual shifts, bridging historical inquiry with contemporary expanded print practices.
During the residency, I will produce a series of prints that draw formally and conceptually from early animation sheets and optical devices, reinterpreted through contemporary print strategies. The work will explore liminal spaces between the physical and virtual, and between individual authorship and collective circulation through multiples and small editions. Superimposed imagery, visible registration shifts, repeated matrices, and modular compositions will emphasize process, translation, and iteration as integral elements of the final works.
The project will primarily use serigraphy (screen printing), with extensions into risograph printing and relief processes. These methods allow for control and variation, enabling rhythm and motion to emerge through material decisions. Registration and overprinting will be employed intentionally as compositional tools, reinforcing printmaking as a practice in dialogue with other media. As an MFA graduate in Print Media from Concordia University, I approach this residency as an opportunity to deepen my engagement with print as a collaborative, research-oriented, and technically rigorous medium.
The one-month residency will focus on developing a print series and an edition, refining a cohesive visual language, and producing a unified body of work that remit to early animation print sheets and devices. Atelier Circulaire’s production studios, technical expertise, and artist-run environment are essential to the realization of this project, supporting experimentation, exchange, and material exploration within a clearly defined scope.
Environmental responsibility will be integrated through limited-edition runs, reuse of test prints, careful material planning, and the use of water-based inks, aligning with sustainable studio practices.
The residency will culminate in a public presentation offering insight into a studio-based research process where diasporic experience, print history, and expanded printmaking intersect. This presentation emphasizes making as a form of knowledge-sharing, contributing to Atelier Circulaire’s ongoing dialogue around print, experimentation, and community.
Bio and statement :
Vinicius de Aguiar Sanchez (b. 1987, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), also known as Vico, is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher whose practice spans animation, print, sculpture, and sound. His work engages imaginaries formed in diaspora, drawing from Latin American folklore, speculative fiction, and contemporary technologies. Through an ethos of play, Sanchez reorients inherited narratives and probes what it means to be human in an increasingly interconnected and technologically mediated world.
Sanchez has exhibited and screened his work internationally, including presentations at the Museum London (London, On), the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery (Montréal, QC), the Robert C. Williams Paper Animation Film Festival (Atlanta, GA, USA), The Center for Book Arts (New York, NY, USA), the Museum of Image and Sound (São Paulo, Brazil), and the Norton Museum of Art (West Palm Beach, FL, USA). His projects frequently bridge analog and digital processes, exploring hybrid forms of storytelling and
material experimentation.
Sanchez holds a Master’s in Studio Arts with a concentration in Print Media from Concordia University in Montréal (M.F.A., 2024), a B.F.A. from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2011), and completed a post-baccalaureate program at the Studio Arts Center International in Florence, Italy (2012). Most recently, Sanchez completed a research grant from the Canada-U.S. Fulbright Program as a Fellow. Through independent research across Canadian film archives, he investigated the roles of cross-cultural exchange and immigration in expanding the field of animation and its related pedagogies.
The Hunt / La Chasse (Oxóssi)
Silkscreen print on tarpaulin and recycled fabrics
1.8 × 2.7 m, 2024
From Game of Animal / Jeux d’Animaux, solo exhibition, Slip Space Gallery, Montreal, 2024
Credit: Eric Tschaeppeler