Culture Resource is pleased to announce the grantees of the third 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 53 applications for this round from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Yemen, Mauritania and Bahrain. Of these, 38 were for international travels and 15 were for regional travels. The jury selected 8 grantees.
Grantees
Haya Zaatry and her band, Palestine / singer and songwriter
Destination: Palestine → Portugal, France, Sweden
Itinerary: Haya will travel to Europe for a three-country tour to launch the album Rahawan. The tour will take her to Portugal, France and Sweden. In addition to staging a performance in each country, which will help her build audiences, she will forge closer relations with cultural centers and cultural actors involved in music. The album pays tribute to women across the ages and seeks to transcend geographical boundaries, transmitting the music from its Levantine source to larger Mediterranean and European contexts. The Wijhat grant will help introduce Haya and her band to new audiences in different venues and enable them to acquire skills in planning and promoting performance tours.
Malak Yacout, Egypt / assistant professor, Visual Arts Dept, AUC
Destination: Egypt → Italy
Itinerary: Malak will take part in an arts residency in the Museo delle Civiltà in Italy where she will study collections of personal artifacts that Italian colonial authorities had taken from some North African countries and previously displayed in the former Museo Coloniale di Roma. Malak will communicate with individuals or communities that manufactured and used these items, and then collect their thoughts and stories in a book that she will present in a seminar in Rome in 2023. This artistic residency will enrich Malak’s historical and artistic research practices and contribute to a deeper understanding of the conventional modes of interaction and communication in international academic establishments.
The Orchid Theater Troupe“, Morocco
Destination: Morocco → Germany
Itinerary: The Orchid theater troupe will travel to Germany to complete the work on the “Joint Performance Fake Paradise,” a performance theater production created together with students from educational institutions in Schwäbisch Gmünd. This cultural exchange culminates two years of work and collaboration between the Orchid Association and Projektgruppe New Limes e.V. The importance of this trip is that it will transmit in person the creative experience of the Moroccan artists who had been working remotely on this joint production until this point and who will now be better able to convey the project’s concepts from an Arab artistic vantage point.
Mina Nasr, Egypt / visual artist
Destination: Egypt → US
Itinerary: Mina will travel to the US to take part in an artistic residency at Art Omi. He will be working on his project on the environmental impacts of hydroelectric dams, with a focus on the loss of aquatic biodiversity in the Nile Valley. Towards this end, he will conduct a field study in New York state on the destruction of dams as a means to conserve aquatic ecosystems. His research will culminate in a textual and audiovisual exposition on water related issues connected with power and influence, conflict, pollution and migration using diagrams and illustrations, installation art and video. He will present this work in a collective exhibition at the end of the residency which will also afford him the opportunity to exchange expertise with artists and critics and to expand his network of professional relations.
Mohammed Alasi, Palestine / composer and instrumentalist
Destination: Lebanon → Sweden
Itinerary: Mohammed will attend a 15-day music residency with the Sweden-based oud master Professor Ahmad Al Khatib. The program will include ten intensive sessions covering individual and group performance, composition and improvisation, and diverse oud techniques. The residency will contribute to the development of Mohammed’s personal musical composition project through recordings and rehearsals. The experience will also enable him to develop and enrich the abilities of 30 children in southern Lebanon where he is a volunteer worker for Beit Atfal Assumoud’s music project..
Gultrah Sound System band, Tunisia
Destination: Tunisia → Morocco
Itinerary: Gultrah Sound System band will perform in the Visa for Music festival in Morocco. A leading independent music group in Tunisia, Gultrah Sound System fuses Tunisian musical heritage with world music traditions in its songs for freedom and against various social ills. Participating in this festival will enable Mohamed and his fellow group members to meet and network with music professionals from around the world, expand their fan base in the Arab region and search for partners to promote their music in the global market.
Damascus Theater Lab, Syria
Destination: Syria → Tunisia
Itinerary: Members of the Damascus Theater Lab will travel to Tunisia to take part in the Carthage Theater Festival in which they will present Shams w Majed which they produced in 2021. The festival is an important venue for presenting Syrian theatrical productions abroad. In addition to the opportunity to introduce this play to a new and diverse audience, this participation will benefit the professional development and prospects of the performers and production team. It will also contribute to the advancement of innovative theater production and playwriting because of the opportunities the festival offers for meeting, networking and collaboration between individuals and groups involved in theater.
Sarri Elfaitouri, Libya / visual artist
Destination: Libya → France
Itinerary: Sarri will attend the 11-month Residency of the Fondation Fiminco in Paris where he will work on an experimental, interdisciplinary art project that blends academic research with digital and installation art. The project aims to deconstruct informal urban expansion in Libya as a possible form of social, political and spacial resistance. It will feature an installation, based on research, representing the diverse layers of Libyan society, political life, and culture. In addition to developing his artistic skills, the residency will offer Sarri the opportunity to broaden his professional relations in Libya and abroad, and to establish a new international artistic network in Paris.
Jury:
Aser El Saqqa, Palestine-UK / founding director Arts Canteen (London), programmer and festival producer
Reem Gibriel, Libya / plastic artist and Culture Resource General Assembly member
Aliaa al-Khaledi, Palestine-Lebanon / director, actress, cultural manager and professor in Arabic theater
The Wıjhat 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 Bassem Yousri (Egypt), from his participation in the “Recycled Artist in Residency” (RAIR) program in Philadelphia, USA, supported by Wijhat 2021.
