The Grant’s 2021 edition widens its geographic borders to include artists and designers from the Middle East and North Africa alongside Saudi nationals. Applicants are invited to submit proposals as groups or individual artists practicing visual art, painting, sculpture, photography, or multidisciplinary art.
Additionally, the Institute has doubled the Grant funds to 1,000,000 Saudi Riyals (USD 266,632). The chosen theme for the Grant’s second edition is UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
As our globalization efforts increase and begin to adopt new technologies and infrastructures, resulting in dramatic structural and cultural changes, we continue to learn, grow, and undergo rapid developments. As we move past western orientalist fantasies, the Arab region has morphed into reconstructed urban cities while looking for the balance between cultural homogeny and a holistic reconstruction of identity representation. In this sense, we have not told our full story yet, we are incomplete, ongoing, and the possibilities are endless. Prompting the question, are we still "under construction"?
The second annual Misk Art Grant's theme, 'Under Construction', derives from the symbolic state of Arab society as emerging cultural hubs concerned with perspective. In particular, how identity is perceived as an emblem of growth, continuity, and endless iterations of cultural representations throughout history. Artists and designers from the Middle East and North Africa are invited to address the theme as a process of displacement, repetition, distortion, and incompleteness in a time of synthesis, understanding, and promise for the future. As we attempt to reconfigure our identity within the Arab world's diverse framework, how can you reconstruct the understanding of your identity to encompass the notion of being ongoing or ‘under construction’?
Visual artists working in traditional arts, applied arts, film, typography, architecture, textile design, furniture-making, stained glass, woodworking, metalworking, or other multidisciplinary art practice.
Criteria:
MAI accepts proposals in complete confidence and acknowledges that the information contained therein shall be shared and reviewed strictly by MAI and the appointed Misk Art Grant committee.
Director Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation, and Curator of 6th Marrakech Biennale
Art Advisor and Cultural Strategist.
Head of Collections & Conservation at King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture.
Laila Alfaddagh has over 10 years’ experience in the cultural industry, including developing cross-cultural alliances. Such partnerships include the British Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Art Dubai. She was responsible for building the museum collection at Ithra, and overseeing the development of new exhibitions.