Warehouse421 Announces Eight Residents For The Homebound Residency Program
Warehouse421, the home-grown arts and design center dedicated to showcasing and nurturing creative production across the region, was very pleased to receive 140 applications from artists around the MENASA region for the first iteration of the Homebound Residency Program, launched on June 17, 2020. Seven projects by eight residents were selected after a month-long rigorous application assessment process and they are:
Batool Desouky & Zain Mahjoub (Tariff), Bhoomika Asvinkumar Ghaghada, Engy Mohsen, Fatima Uzdenova, Mahshid Rafiei, Mona Ayyash, and Rand Abdul Jabbar.
You can read more about the artists here.
The program aims to support creative practitioners in the region in producing new work and exploring digital forms of community engagement in their practices. The residency program covers a production budget of up to AED 30,000 to obtain the required equipment and materials for the realization of their projects in their own spaces.
Residents will identify mentors that can help guide them through the residency process, and Warehouse421 will provide material and logistical support to support new bodies of work looking out beyond the current pandemic, culminating in a digital exposition of process and work.
Commenting on the projects and artist selected, Faisal Al Hassan, Head of Warehouse421, said: “We are pleased with the applications we received. They are a testament to the agility of artists and creatives in the region, who saw the current shifts in our societies as points of departure for new inquiries in their creative practices.”
He also added: ” This residency program was scheduled to take place at Warehouse421 in Mina Zayed, but the reality we live in today created a necessity to redefine space and attempt to decentralize artists’ production.”
Selected Artists and Projects
Batool Desouky and Zain Mahjoub
The creative duo produced Tariff, an experimental online publishing platform, launched in late 2018. Batool and Zain’s project aims to start a discussion with contributors and readers worldwide to discuss various topics of our presence within the cultural, political, and temporal overlap between Arabic and English.
Bhoomika Asvinkumar Ghaghada
Bhoomika will build and curate a widely accessible archive of creative work from the UAE. This project will explore how to cultivate reciprocity in digital spaces by setting up a space of abundance and openness. She aims to develop tools and interaction technologies to cultivate a mindset of exchange and collective-first.
Engy Mohsen
Engy will launch a project wherein participants will be asked to sign up via email to take part in an online conversation with an anonymous partner. Participants will randomly be placed to video chat with others for very brief encounters.
Fatima Uzdenova
Fatima will be developing a fictive University entitled the University of Djudjustan. This project will offer a variety of courses, modules, seminars, and lectures. It will focus on holistic teaching methods and alternative educational initiatives.
Mahshid Rafiei
Mahshid aims to develop a project that focuses on the myth of piracy in the Arabian Gulf during the 18th century, when the region was branded as ‘The Pirate Coast’ by the British to delegitimize Gulf rulers, to expand their colonial rule from the Indian Ocean to the Arabian Gulf.
Mona Ayyash
Mona’s project revolves around collecting videos in an attempt to speed-up or slow-down time. She intends to create a one-hour video containing a series of small videos, pushing the themes of attention and boredom.
Rand Abdul Jabbar
Rand’s project aims to examine the remnants of historic, cultural, and personal narratives surrounding Iraq. In connection with this, she will organize an outreach program and a series of workshops that build dialogue across an expanded community of participants.
It is worth noting that The Warehouse421 Homebound Residency Program was open to all creative practitioners, including but not limited to Visual Arts and Curation, Design and Technology, Literary Arts, Music, Culinary Arts, Theater, and Performance, in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia region.
