May 12, 2010 – Adrián Villar Rojas is the first recipient of The Banff Centre’s Raul Urtasun - Frances Harley Scholarship for Young Emerging Artists from Argentina. With this scholarship Rojas will attend Visual Art's fall thematic residency The distance between our minds and thoughts equals the distance between our words and mouths (September 13 - October 29, 2010), led by renowned Berlin-based art critic Jan Verwoert. The residency is “about acts, ideas, and emotions that constitute community in a different manner, through enacted difference, through the motion of standing apart together.”

The Raul Urtasun - Frances Harley Scholarship was established by Dr. Raul Urtasun and Dr. Frances Harley-Urtasun to accelerate the careers and works of Argentinean artists by offering unparalleled opportunities for them to gain access to world-class production faculties, mentoring and learning opportunities, networks, and a creative working environment. The Fund also aims to increase the exchange of ideas and high level collaborations between Argentinean and Canadian artists.

Rojas is an emerging artist based in Buenos Aires who has been exhibiting throughout South America for the past six years. More recently his works have been included in the exhibitions Moby Dick (2010), organized by curator Jens Hoffmann at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, and Panorama del Arte Brasiliera (2009), Museum of Modern Art, Sao Paulo. He has also exhibited at Art Basel 39, ARCO 27, Madrid, and the X Biennial of Cuenca, Ecuador. Rojas is featured in the Phaidon publication Creamier (London, 2010).