A total of $200,000 will be shared by ten 10 artists, duos and collectives who have been selected through an international open call for Sharjah Art Foundation’s 2022 Production Grant. The money will provide core funding and professional support for the realisation of the grantees’ proposed projects.
One of the Foundation’s core initiatives, the Production Grant broadens the possibilities for the making of art by offering funding as well as professional and developmental support to regional and international artists. Through the biannual open call, art practitioners are invited to propose “projects that inspire, inquire, investigate and give rise to meaningful collective experiences”.
Awardees then work closely with the Foundation to develop, produce and present their projects, which can span a wide range of media including sculpture, artist’s books, mixed media, installation and performance.
Past Production Grants have had a significant impact on artistic activity throughout the region and beyond, enabling artists to realise ambitious projects of a scale and complexity that would have been challenging to achieve without this support. Examples include …
- 2010 grantees: CAMP and Bani Abidi – projects premiered at dOCUMENTA 13
- 2012: Sean Gullette – his film Traitors premiered at the 2013 Venice Film Festival
- 2012: Lindsay Seers – Nowhere Less Now was presented in London and is now part of the Artangel Collection of notable film and video installations at Tate
- 2014: Jumana Manna – her film A Magical Substance Flows into Me premiered as part of her solo exhibition at London’s Chisenhale Gallery in 2015
- 2016: Khaled Sabsabi – Bring the Silence was included in the 21st Biennale of Sydney
- 2018: Mounira Al Solh – Freedom is a Habit I am Trying to Learn was avant-premiered at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in 2019
About the 2022 Production Grant Awardees
Abdul Halik Azeez b.1985, Nawalapitiya, Sri Lanka; lives and works in Colombo
Abdul Halik Azeez’s work reflects on technologies of power as mediated through contemporary culture, narratives of progress, lived experiences and media.
Nadir Bouhmouch (b.1990, Casablanca) & Soumeya Ait Ahmed (b.1992, Casablanca); both live and work in Marrakech
Nadir Bouhmouch and Soumeya Ait Ahmed’s collaboration is based on their sense of urgency towards rapidly eroding ancestral, artistic, social and ecological practices and knowledge.
Nadim Choufi b.1994, Abu Dhabi; lives and works in Beirut
Nadim Choufi’s work focuses on the material histories and futures of innovation, their social and political driving forces, and the visual and literary practices that surround them.
Preempt Group – Mbali Dhlamini (b.1990, Soweto) & Phumulani Ntul (b.1986, Johannesburg); both live and work in Johannesburg
Preempt Group came together as a collective in 2018 to explore the possibilities of analogue, hybrid and transmedia. The collective examines the intersection between colonial archives and open-source technologies through performance, film and workshops.
Inas Halabi b.1988, Palestine; lives and works between Palestine and the Netherlands
Inas Halabi works primarily with film to explore how social and political conditions of the past are inextricably linked to the present and the impact that overlooked or suppressed histories have on contemporary life.
Asmaa Jama (b.1998 Aalborg, Denmark; lives and works in Bristol) & Gouled Ahmed (b.1992 in Djibouti; lives and works in Addis Ababa)
Since 2021, Asmaa Jama, an artist and poet, and Gouled Ahmed, a costume designer and stylist, have been evolving a collaborative practice that encompasses photography, costume design, styling, poetry and painting.
Zahra Malkani b.1986, Karachi; lives and works in Karachi
Zahra Malkani’s research-based practice spans multiple media, including sound, video and the web. She explores the politics of development, infrastructure and militarism in Pakistan through the lens of dissident ecological knowledges and traditions of environmental resistance.
Paribartana Mohanty b.1982, Odisha; lives and works in New Delhi
Paribartana Mohanty examines how technologies of algorithmic networks, digitalisation, data mining, access and surveillance are shaping public perception about ‘natural’ calamity, and how new government policies are changing the rural landscapes in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
Aarti Sunder b.1987, India; lives and works in India
Encompassing drawing, video, performance and writing, Aarti Sunder’s research and practice lie at the crossroads of digital humanities and contemporary art.
Mila Turajlić b.1979, Belgrade; lives and works between Belgrade and Paris
Mila Turajlić is a filmmaker and visual artist whose documentary works draw on a combination of oral histories, documentary archives, fiction films and found footage to fabricate a new reflexive language that confronts memory and ruins with the disappearing narratives of history.
Above: Raed Yassin, The Exhibition (2016). Installation view: Ten Years of Production Programme, Sharjah Art Foundation, 2018. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation
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