ART NEWS Alserkal Arts Foundation Awards Inaugural Research Grants

Alserkal Arts Foundation has awarded its inaugural research grants to practitioners breaking new ground in their innovative approaches to transnational film histories, contemporary architecture and urbanism, and indigenous knowledge and local ecologies in the context of Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA).

The recipients, Léa Morin, Manar Moursi, Shahana Rajani and Jeanne Penjan Lassus, shortlisted from over 200 applications, were further vetted by the Alserkal family and Alserkal team alongside a panel of artists, researchers, and academics from the Alserkal network, including Alserkal Arts Foundation Curatorial Advisor Nada Raza, artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Alserkal Arts Foundation, Alserkal Residency Selection Committee members Raja’a Khalid and Uzma Rizvi, and researcher and curator Kristine Khouri.

Awarded for a two-year period the grants challenge established research methods and modes of practice, $5,000 for individuals and $10,000 for collaborative projects. Supporting knowledge production and critical exchange that disrupt and expand the boundaries between disciplines, the grants emphasize alternative frameworks that link the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Supported by the Alserkal family, the research grants represent a core pillar of the Foundation’s mandate. Alserkal Founder Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal said: “The Alserkal Arts Foundation has supported socially engaged, multi-disciplinary practices, and facilitated cross-cultural exchange through artist residencies, commissions, and exhibitions. By awarding these inaugural research grants to emerging practitioners, we are furthering our support for researchers embedded in the context of our region, and who are expanding geographic and disciplinary boundaries.”

Alserkal Founder Abdelmonem Bin Eisa Alserkal / Photo by Sueraya Shaheen

About the projects

Léa Morin is a curator and independent researcher based in Casablanca, Morocco. Her project, CINIMA 3: Lodz – Casablanca, Some meaningless events to retrace, reframes the history of cinema in the Maghreb, retracing the missing stories of a lost generation of aspiring Moroccan filmmakers, particularly exchanges between Lodz in Poland and Casablanca in the period following Moroccan independence in the 1960s.

Morin says: “This grant is for me a unique opportunity to experiment with new forms and modes of research and writing, to explore the margins of our histories, and to invent new approaches. My research project is a space for critical thought and connection, a sharing of knowledge, and a re-activation of histories that dominant narratives have erased. It’s an opportunity to breathe new life, for the present as well as the future, into a forgotten chapter of history, like the often-overlooked artistic, cultural, and political circulations, especially between Poland, Morocco, and the ‘third world’ in the 1960s and 70s.”

Léa Morin / Photo courtesy of Alserkal Arts Foundation

Manar Moursi is a multi-disciplinary designer and artist from Cairo, Egypt. The Loudspeaker and the Tower looks at the proliferation of new mosque constructions in Egypt, particularly unusual mixed-use typologies. An architectural study deploying extensive photographic documentation of both ubiquitous and overlooked structures, the project reconsiders minarets as both symbolic and strategic apparatuses.

Moursi says: “The Alserkal Arts Foundation Research Grant comes at a pivotal point in my four-year-long research project. It will enable me to transform all the research material collected so far into a consolidated artist book, an affordable artwork with its architecture, editorial perspective, and a wider circulation potential. The book will allow the reader to follow the path of my drives on the outskirts of Cairo, around the Ringroad, and roads leading out of the city to the North and South. It will also allow the reader to understand the development of new mosque construction along these axes buttressed with historical, and present-day socio-political, and economic contextual analysis and materials.”

Manar Moursi / Photo courtesy of Alserkal Arts Foundation

Shahana Rajani and Jeanne Penjan Lassus are artists based in Karachi and Bangkok, respectively. Their project, Embodied Cartographies and Visual Entanglements in the Delta traces practices and transmissions of situated knowledge in the Indus Delta to develop sensorial methods that grapple with climate change, ecological disturbances, and the politics of representation. They focus on coastal communities that deal with infrastructural development, and the militarization of the landscape in the Delta region in Pakistan.

Rajani and Lassus say: “The Alserkal Arts Foundation Research Grant is an amazing, and rare opportunity when it comes to supporting for research-based practices in the region. We are very thrilled that our project was selected, as this will enable us to conduct our research in the Delta, form long-term relationships and solidarities, and rethink our methods and ways of engaging as visual artists.”

Shahana Rajani / Photo courtesy of Alserkal Arts Foundation

Jeanne Penjan Lassus / Photo courtesy of Alserkal Arts Foundation

Vilma Jurkute, Alserkal Director, added: “The COVID-19 pandemic further cemented how important it is for us to support radical and alternative research practices within the region and beyond. The selected projects contribute to much needed ‘unlearnings’ currently challenging traditional positions, producing new forms of knowledge as a result.”

Vilma Jurkute, Alserkal Director / Photo by Sueraya Shaheen

The Foundation carefully considers the dissemination of its growing archive through future platforms, both online and offline, to ensure the knowledge and research it amasses is available to all publics.