The Patina Maldives Art Collection

The inaugural flagship property, Patina Maldives, Fari Islands is the latest hospitality concept by Capella Hotel Group. Esteemed for its sustainable ethos, the elevated Maldivian island destination drives the connection between Tomorrow’s travellers and nature; celebrating wellness and empowering communities. 

As the official art consultant of Patina Maldives, The Artling worked closely alongside architects, Brazilian firm Studio MK27, and landscape architects VDLA, as we sought to curate and design a holistic collection of artwork, consisting of bespoke commissioned artworks and unique design pieces by international artists. Works by Hiroko Takeda, Cassio Vasconcellos, Hongjie Yang, Jose Davila and FAHR 021.3, are interspersed across the island and in the 110 exquisite Villas and Studios offered by the resort. 

Guided by Patina’s philosophy of reconnecting and tuning in with one’s own senses, the island’s permanent art collection is dedicated to sensorial appreciation, exhibiting artworks which vary across different mediums, textures and techniques. Warmly greeting new travellers at the arrival house is the island’s only textile artwork, Home Deep Blue, hand-woven out of Cotton Linen by critically-acclaimed New York-based Japanese textile artist, Hiroko Takeda. 

In this work, the artist approached the composition of this work three dimensionally—laterally, vertically and topographically, in order to weave this simultaneously intricate and lulling textile piece. She amuses the viewer’s perception as horizontal movement and distance merge with the nearness and depth of the ocean up through the surface to the sky; What is close is what is far. 

Hiroko Takeda bears her roots in Japan, where she was trained in the tradition of the Mingei Undou (Japanese Arts and Crafts Movement). Hiroko began her practice in Kyoto and Tokyo and later pursued her MA in Constructed Textiles at the Royal College of Art in London. Prior to opening her Brooklyn Studio, the work of the Japanese Artist has seen success, receiving numerous awards such as the Tokyo International Textile Award. Since then, Hiroko’s art and design work has been commissioned by private collectors and leading architects worldwide, and widely featured in web publications such as Architectural Digest and Elle Decor. 

As guests settle into their private sanctuaries, they will discover that housed within the walls of all Patina's private Villas and Studios is Palms, a series comprising of nine photographic prints by award-winning Brazilian Photographer, Cássio Campos Vasconcellos. Born and bred in Brazil, Vasconcellos has mastered his expertise in photography since 1981, with his images exhibited over 200 times in twenty countries. Today, the artist’s photographs are prized in Brazil’s main private collections, as well as international museums such as Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston Texas. 

Palms by Cássio Campos Vasconcellos captures the exuberance of tropical nature, laced with a nostalgic sentiment. Vasconcellos travelled to the Fari Islands when they were still under construction, to capture some of the raw nature that exists in the Maldives, in his signature style. He takes inspiration from the engravings and landscape paintings of traveling artists from the early 19th century, recreating the spirit of adventure felt by these pioneering travelers as they encountered new and unfamiliar landscapes. Created two centuries later and translated through the lens of photography, it is as if the artist has tried to go back in time to experience and memorialise the sensation of discovering these sublime places.

Erected alongside the Maldives’ lofty palm trees towers the eight Mirrored Columns which make up Hongjie Yang’s Synthesis Monoliths. Synthesis Monolith is a bespoked commissioned installation piece which investigates the transformative properties of metal, tracing in a single totemic object the primitive origins of aluminium and steel in rock ores through to their emergence as highly polished artificial materials. These sculptures play with the notion of the uncanny; initial familiarity is undermined by uncertainties around the properties of materials, the objects’ origins, and the processes through which they were made. In the production of the marine-grade stainless steel columns, Yang utilised an experimental casting technique which combines ancient craft with contemporary technology, expressed in the convergence of natural and machined surfaces. The reflective exterior brings the viewer’s living presence into the sculpture’s aesthetic and form, seeking to evoke a state of contemplation.

Hongjie Yang explores the power of transformation by bringing in a wide range of disciplines into the world of art, design and technology, examining plausible scenarios and their influences on transforming our preconceived perceptions. The Netherlands based designer-artist attributes his artistic process and approach to his study at the Design Academy Eindhoven, where he received his MA in Contextual Design in 2015. He has since branched out from the Dutch arts scene, with works exhibited across the European continent and most recently, in Shanghai China. 

Next, in the resort’s Water Sports Centre, we have installed a wall featuring a playful collection of work by Ropes & Wood. Conceptualised and spearheaded by Canadian artist Annie Lajeunesse in 2014, Annie was inspired to transform and bring life to everyday objects. She began creating a unique visual for paddles by hand painting wooden signs made from ancestral barn wood. Since her realization of the project, the contemplation of a landscape or the inspiration of decor leads to her unique creations. She also incorporates her love of the "nautical style" and nature, which form the foundations of her work.

Constructed South-West of the property is the unapologetic Los Límites de lo Posible IX by Mexican sculptor Jose Dávila. 

Starting his artistic journey with formal education in the field of architecture, the mexican sculptor Jose Dávila, who identifies as a self-taught artist with intuitive training has earned a name for himself, with his sculptures exhibited across the globe. For Jose, art and sculpture exist and poetically communicate through contradictory and contrasting relations as he reconfigures the correspondence between form and content to its limit. Jose’s sculptural work is based on the specificity of the employed materials, their origin, symbolic value, and their formal characteristics are elements that take great significance; industrial materials interact with organic raw materials. 

In Los Límites de lo Posible IX, Dávila works with recinto, a kind of volcanic rock, and raw sandstone boulders. The interaction between the perfect geometric shapes of the recinto volumes and the capricious forms of the unaltered boulders, reveals a relation of contrast which is an essential part of Dávila’s sculptural practice.

Interestingly, through the juxtaposing stances, the exchange of effort and resistance is accentuated as these sculptures maintain their shape; calm and tension, fragility and solidity, all while inhabiting a common space. The relations between opposites and the exchange of power can function as material radiographies of the social dynamics that give shape to the way in which space is occupied and inhabited in a certain cultural context.

Laying ever so still on the coasts of Fari Island, the effortless yet formidable Momento joins sunbathers in overlooking the crystal blue Maldivian waters. Momento was another site-specific piece, carefully engineered for Patina Maldives by FAHR 021.3. Derived from the German word Erfahrung (experience), the nationally distinguished and internationally awarded creative and experimental studio, FAHR 021.3, was founded by Filipa Frois Almeida and Hugo Reis in Porto, Portugal. Since its conception in 2012, FAHR 021.3 stands up as a lab studio who prides themselves on innovation and experimentation, testing the boundaries between disciplines to bring to life unexpected architectural interventions with new imaginative purposes. 

Their fascination with liminality is asserted in Momento - a construction of a temporal moment that hovers over the beach, recreating a scenic space of fruition between the sea and the vegetation, surely punctuating nature with its majestic profile. Through a very simple geometric action the idea of this concrete sculpture is to be able to build a new space of dialogue between the human body with the landscape and time that surrounds it. 

Patina Maldives, Fari Islands Resorts is where art, nature, space and community harmoniously coexist and interact to create fruitful and long-lasting relationships. As they open their doors to the next generation of intentional and conscious travellers across the world, visitors are welcome to explore the resort’s art collection pieced together by The Artling, as they make space for a new-found spirit of wonder, reflection and interaction in their own lives.

To discover your sanctuary at Patina Maldives, Fari Islands Resorts, click here!

Click here to read more about James Turrell's latest installation, Skyspace Amarta, at Fari Islands, Maldives!

Have a space that needs art? The Artling offers end-to-end consultancy and sourcing services for both private and corporate clients. From developing art themes and narratives, guiding the concept design process, to sourcing and commissioning artworks to project specifications, we offer all our clients a seamless and streamlined experience. 

To find out more on The Artling’s Consultancy Projects, click here!