Culture Resource is pleased to announce the grantees of the first round of Wijhat 2022, a program that supports artists and cultural actors through travel grants that enable them to participate in artistic and cultural activities in the Arab region and abroad.
The Wijhat team received 51 applications for this round from Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Sudan, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Mauritania, Iraq and Libya. Of these, 35 were for international travel, 15 were for regional travels and 1 was for regional and international travel. The jury selected 8 grantees of which 3 are for regional and 5 are for international travels.
Grantees
Bassem Yousri (Egypt) / visual artist and filmmaker
Destination: Egypt → US
Itinerary: Bassem will participate in the Recycled Artist in Residency (RAIR) program in Philadelphia, USA, in order to carry out a large-scale installation (or several midsize works) using diverse industrial raw materials. The aim is to discover a new aesthetic that engages a certain impromptu or random visual and functional synthesis, the point being not to dwell on detail as long as the solutions serve their intended purpose. The artist’s work will be displayed to the public at the end of his residency. He will also deliver a lecture on his work and exchange expertise with fellow residency participants and meet with other artists and curators in his field.
George Matar (Palestine) / production director at Al-Harah Theater
Destination: Palestine → Tunisia
Itinerary: George and Al-Harah Theater center will take part in the 24 Hours Non-stop Theater festival in El Kef, Tunisia, organized by the Center for Dramatic and Scenic Arts of Kef. Al-Harah will present “The Old Man Sem’an” a play written and produced by Al-Harah Theater center for children. The event offers an opportunity to exchange artistic expertise aimed at improving the quality of dramatic arts presented to the public and to children, in particular. As the first festival Al-Harah participates in since the Covid-19 pandemic, it will help revive the company’s cultural life and cultural exchanges.
Suhaib Gasmelbari (Sudan) / artist and filmmaker
Destination: Sudan → Germany
Itinerary: Suhaib will travel to Berlin to take part in Sudan Arts and Culture Days (2022) organized by Dar Sudan . The festival will screen his documentary film, “Talking about Trees,” as well as “Al-Sit”, a short fiction film by fellow Sudanese filmmaker Suzannah Mirghani. The event will open avenues for collaboration with a unique group of female artists and cultural activists working to advance the cultural scene and freedom of expression and creativity in Sudan. In addition to the screenings, there will be talks and discussions on the history of Sudanese cinema and the challenges to filmmakers in Sudan. Suhaib will also take part in other activities with Dar Sudan to explore the possibilities for collaboration in developing the Sudanese cultural scene and forging special partnerships to rehabilitate movie houses in Sudan.
Diana Abbas (Syria) / plastic artist
Destination: Syria → France
Itinerary: Diana plans to attend a training course at the Institute of Art Conservation and Colour (IACC) in Paris with a focus on acquiring the concepts and techniques for color retouching using the visual trivariance method. The course introduces the basic concepts of restoration and the specialised sciences and technologies which Diane intends to apply to the conservation of Arab artistic heritage from decay, forgery and loss. As part of the course, she will conduct a study on areas where the arts and sciences overlap, as is the case with art and the technologies of art restoration, which will give her access to the facilities of the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) and French museums.
Majdi Karakrah (Palestine) / performer and dancer
Destination: Palestine → France
Itinerary: Majdi will travel together with the El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe to compete in the 7th edition of Danse Élargie which will take place at Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. The competition opens doors to networking with other artists and directors of theaters and cultural spaces. Participant artists will perform before a live audience and a jury that will select five individuals to take part in an arts residency. Majdi and three dancers and choreographers from El-Funoun will present “Three Dots.” An exploratory work in the process of creation, it fuses the essence folk dance with the dancers’ daily lives in a study of the language of the Palestinian dabka. The contest gives them the chance to develop this project into a staged performance.
Jumana Abboud (Palestine) / visual artist
Destination: Palestine → Germany
Itinerary: Jumana will take part in Documenta 15, a 100 day long contemporary art exhibition held every five years in Kassel, Germany. The new works Jumana will be creating for this event are inspired by her research into water resource locations in Palestine and their connection with the past, present and future of the Palestinian people. She will also conduct a workshop with three women from London, Paris and Cologne who are from(mixed Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi, Moroccan and German backgrounds, to exchange and discuss narratives related to memory, language, water and human rights. The activities will shed light on Palestinians as an indigenous people, and Palestinian water rights and, more generally, climate justice, indigenous cultures and threatened heritage.
Amr Gamal, Yemen / director and filmmaker
Destination: Yemen → Egypt
Itinerary: Amr will travel to Cairo to complete production of his feature length fiction film “Exhausted”. He will be working together with the Egyptian film editor Heba Othman and in collaboration with the Sudanese director Amjad Abu Alala. Some 100 Yemeni youths contributed to making this film which will be edited at the Cult Film Production company. The trip to Cairo will enable Amr to personally oversee the post production processes and complete the film on schedule so it can be entered into film festivals.
Sarra Mohammed Al-Hadi, Yemen / writer and content creator
Destination: Sanaa → Socotra
Itinerary: Sarra with a team from the Boncast platform will take part in an arts residency in Socotra where they will work on the project, Documenting the Voice of Socotra. The team will record and document traditional folksongs and the orally transmitted myths and folktales as a first step to creating the audio content of a podcast series that aims to conserve the unique and important cultural heritage of the Socotra archipelago that UNESCO recognised as a world natural heritage site in 2008. The research and recording will be carried out in coordination with the researcher Ahmed Issa Amer and Dr. Mohammed al-Mahfali.
Jury
Raed Asfour, Jordan/ Theater director with extensive experience in theater and cinema. He served as executive director of the Amman theater Days festival and the director of Al Balad theater and executive director of the Arab theater Training Center.
Sayed Mahmoud, Egypt / Poet and journalist with al-Ahram Newspaper. He has also served as editor-in-chief of al-Kahera published by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. He has served as a jury member for the Arab Booker Prize and Sawiris Cultural Award . He is also a member of the Culture Resource General Assembly.
Nadira Laggoune, Algeria / Director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Algiers, a curator and lecturer at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts d’Alger.
The Wijhat program aims to promote the arts and culture from the Arab region, both regionally and internationally, by supporting the regional or international travels of artists and cultural actors from this region so as to facilitate their participation in cultural events and activities that enable them to present their work to diverse audiences in wider regional and/or international contexts, to exchange knowledge and expertise with peers, to build their professional capacities or to develop an artistic project.
*Photo from the project “Chlorophyllic Memory: To Blossom Image” by Omnia Sabry (Egypt), supported by Wijhat 2021.
