Sharjah Art Foundation has announced an open call for its Production Program, which will award a total of $200,000 to projects in this application cycle.
The Foundation’s Production Program broadens the possibilities for MENASA region art production by supporting innovation and excellence in artistic practice through the encouragement of experimentation and risk-taking.
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The past decade has seen an extraordinary rise in artistic activity throughout the Middle East, resulting in increased visibility for artists, both regionally and internationally.
Within this context, Sharjah Art Foundation hopes to promote and encourage an environment of public and private patronage for the highest level of artistic endeavor. The Foundation’s Production Program furthers this goal by supporting artists in their individual attempts to create meaningful and significant work.
In 2022, Sharjah Art Foundation is offering production grants to artists working in a range of media, including sculpture, installation, time-based media, artist’s books, and performance.
The success of a proposal will be determined by merit rather than budget, and projects with budgets ranging from modest to ambitious will be considered.
The submission deadline is February 10, 2022, and selections will be announced in March 2022.|
Art practitioners are invited to propose imaginative, ambitious, and inspirational projects that will transform our understanding of art and how it can be experienced.
With this initiative, Sharjah Art Foundation hopes to engage and challenge artists and audiences aesthetically, intellectually, emotionally, socially, and politically.
The Production Program was launched in 2009 in conjunction with Sharjah Biennial 9.
Past Production Program grant cycles have made significant contributions to the rise in artistic activity throughout the region and beyond.|
Many of the resulting projects have been presented by organizations all around the world, contributing to increased visibility and awareness of the awarded parties’ practices.
Examples include 2010 grantees CAMP and Bani Abidi, whose projects premiered at dOCUMENTA (13); 2012 grantee Sean Gullette, whose film ‘Traitors’ launched at the 2013 Venice Film Festival; Lindsay Seers’ ‘Nowhere Less Now’, presented in London by Artangel and now part of the Artangel Collection at Tate; 2014 grantee Jumana Manna’s film ‘A Magical Substance Flows into Me’ debuted as part of her solo exhibition at London’s Chisenhale Gallery in 2015; 2016 artist Khaled Sabsabi’s Bring the Silence, included in the 21st Biennale of Sydney; and, awarded with a 2018 grant, Mounira Al Solh, whose work ‘Freedom is a Habit I am Trying to Learn’ was avant-premiered at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in 2019.
The 2020 grantees were Jumana Emil Abboud, Mohamed Abdelkarim, Noor Abuarafeh, Basma al-Sharif, Abdessamad El Montassir, Köken Ergun, Pak Khawateen Painting Club, Moad Musbahi, Philip Rizk, and Subversive Film.
Production Program grants are among a growing number of year-round opportunities and programmes offered by Sharjah Art Foundation to support artists and art practitioners in the production and development of new creative work, including curatorial residencies and grants for the creation of short films and publishing projects.
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