How Iara did five art exchanges across four countries in four months
Between July and October, artist Iara Vida moved through Brazil, Spain, Portugal, the UK, and Morocco — teaching earth pigment workshops, painting murals, and giving watercolor classes in exchange for accommodation, food, and workspace. Here's how the exchanges worked.
The artist
Iara Vida is a Brazilian artist whose practice centres on earth pigments — paints made from the dirt, clay, and ochre she gathers from the landscapes she travels through. Her exchanges combine teaching, making, and place: every workshop she runs uses materials collected from the surrounding land.
Between July and October 2025, she stopped in five destinations across four countries, doing a different kind of exchange in each.
Five exchanges, four months
July — Chapada dos Veadeiros, Brazil. A three-day residency on a fazenda in the cerrado. Iara led a workshop teaching participants to paint with local earth pigments and connect with their inner child through the process.
August — Spain and Portugal. Watercolor classes in Spain. In Portugal, live painting, prints, and watercolor sessions.
September — United Kingdom. A mural and a series of wood-surface artworks made from earth gathered in Bristol, Chippenham, and Gold Valley. Artistic mentorships. A workshop in Hereford.
September — Madrid (remote). Online art classes.
October — Morocco. A residency at a cultural space, a watercolor-with-earth residency at a hostel in Marrakesh, and one-on-one watercolor sessions.
How the exchanges worked
The format varied. Hosts included a farm, private homes, a hostel, a Moroccan pousada, and a cultural space. What stayed consistent was the trade: Iara taught, painted, or made work with local materials, and in return received everything she needed — accommodation, food, workspace, materials, and in some cases a fee.
Most stays followed a similar rhythm: roughly three days of active creating or teaching, plus about a week to rest, explore the area, and absorb the place before moving on. The short-sprint shape let her stack five exchanges into four months without burning out.
The transformation
When asked what impact the journey had on her work, Iara is direct: "It gave me authority and a lot of experience."
She credits the geographic and cultural variety for the shift. Moving between the cerrado, the Iberian coast, the English countryside, and the Moroccan medina meant constantly adjusting — to the light, the materials, the pace, the people.
"In every place I had beautiful exchanges. I tasted another cuisine, another culture, another way of seeing life. Each one pulled me out of my comfort zone and taught me something new. I consider myself a different person now."
What she'd change
Iara says she would do it all again. Her one wish: a way to discover more opportunities without relying solely on word of mouth.
Most of her exchanges came through personal connections — a friend of a friend, a chance meeting, a comment on a post. That worked, but it meant her options were limited to whoever happened to be in her network at the right time.
What she's asking for isn't a different kind of exchange. It's a place where artists and hosts can find each other more easily — where opportunities are visible, not hidden. That's what Artaway is built around: bringing these exchanges into the open so more artists can access them and more hosts can offer them.