Alaa Mansour has received the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2023.
The artist will receive a sum of $15,000 from the Han Nefkens Foundation to produce a new, limited-edition video artwork over a period of nine months. The work will be exhibited from 2025 onwards at each institution collaborating in the grant: the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona; the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore; the WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD), Manila and Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai.
Based between Beirut and Marseille, Mansour is an artist, filmmaker and archivist whose work explores forms of power and regimes of images in the context of necropolitics. Her films have been screened at festivals around the world including Visions du Réel, Transmediale, European Media Art Festival, Impakt and Videonale.
Mansour said: “This grant will become a mean to continue working towards the liberation of the spaces of our imagination, our lands, and ultimately our futures. It is a gentle and encouraging push in the collective pursuit toward blowing the lid off the militarisation of the world and its image.”
The artist was chosen as the recipient of the grant by a jury chaired by Han Nefkens and comprising Joselina Cruz, director and curator at Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila; Helena Kritis, chief curator of WIELS, Brussels; Magdalena Magiera, curator of outreach and education at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; Ute Meta Bauer, founding director at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore; Imma Prieto, director at Fundació Antoni Tàpies; Nora Razian, deputy director and head of exhibitions at Jameel Art Centre, Dubai and Dirk Snauwaert, director of WIELS, Brussels. The selection was made in the presence of Hilde Teerlinck, director of the Han Nefkens Foundation and Alessandra Biscaro, coordinator of the Han Nefkens Foundation.
A statement from the selection committee said: “We were struck by Alaa’s compelling use of a range of images from historical and media archives that call attention to different socio-political points of view, casting an unflinching, critical lens on contemporary political violence. We recognise that Alaa’s artistic contribution is a necessary reflection on our times, and concur with her observation of the role of an artist as a socio-political fighter.”
The shortlisted candidates for the Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2023 included:
Mohammad Alfaraj
Anna Dziapshipa
Marianne Fahmy
Areej Huniti & Eliza Goldox
Saodat Ismailova
Saleh Kashefi
Alaa Mansour
Gohar Martirosyan
Anvar Musrepov
The artists were shortlisted from a pool of initial candidates selected by 11 established art critics and curators including Joud Al Tamimi, Çelenk Bafra, Raneem Farsi, Ana Gabelaia, Nazli Ghassemi, Maha Maamoun, Dmitri Makhomet, Wejdan Reda, Mari Spirito, Mi You, and Öykü Özsoy Sağnak.
The Han Nefkens Foundation – Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant 2023 serves as a tool to promote the production of contemporary works in the video art field. The grant is aimed at emerging artists who are 50 years of age or less, have a growing reputation but not had the opportunity to exhibit extensively, and live in the territory of the West and Central Asia (Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Khorasan, Uyghuristan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen).
