2024 Grant

Nihaal Faizal's work engages with the copy, the remake, the replica, the gadget and the gimmick, and takes shape across drawing, sculpture, video, and photography. Recent projects have looked at drawings by AI in science fiction films; the history of Flubber as a semi-fictional substance; a missing song by Mohammed Rafi; artworks in the Indian Prime Minister’s official residence. Faizal is also active as a publisher having founded Reliable Copy in 2018.

Anhar Salem interrogates the politics of images, exploring the interplay between personal identity and collective narratives across private and public spheres. Salem uses video as a critical medium, leveraging its accessibility to examine how digital platforms mediate self-expression and identity-making. By engaging subjects as active participants and utilizing tools like augmented reality filters and interactive installations, Salem creates dialogues that challenge the boundaries of visibility and shared media experiences.

Rat Section is a collaborative music and performance project. Rat Section uses fictional narratives and storytelling to both detract and reinforce the identities of the characters created. A vast fabricated world activates with each performance, drawing from different eras and versions of time in which Rat Section exists, offering fragments of their fictional past. These opaque narratives act as a vehicle for creative, aesthetic and sonic freedom.

Dina Mimi works with experimental filmmaking and lecture performances that examine how and when bodies become sites of resistance. Mimi’s practice is multifaceted and uses video, sound, performance, and text drawing on extended research into death, memory and grief especially within historical events of the colonial past. Recent work researches links between the fugitive and the smuggler, their shared gestures and relationship to being seen.

Ladji Diaby draws from his own and found photographs and artifacts to develop intimate mythologies in his work. Embarking on a quest in which questions of class and race are pivotal, Diaby integrates photographs, memes, gaming, video, and film stills of hidden obsessions and (fallen) idols into his very own personal cosmos. The result is an expansive fan fiction, where Diaby fights existing determinism, revealing a sensitivity for aspects of everyday life and subculture. 

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2023 Grant