Artistic Development Program 2024 Grantees Announced

 

We are pleased to announce that artists Mona Ayyash, Hana El-Sagini, and Realiity Collective have been selected for the 2024 Artistic Development Program. The capacity building program aims to support artists through the production of a major body of work that culminates in a solo exhibition at the 421 campus. 

 

Mona Ayyash is a Dubai-based visual artist, whose practice focuses on repetition, memorization, slowness, and boredom. She holds an MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. Her work was exhibited in NIKA Project Space in 2023, Jameel Art Centre in 2021, and Maraya Art Centre as part of the UAE Unlimited program in 2019. She took part in the Homebound Residency with 421 in 2020 and was an artist-in-residence at the Alserkal Residency for their Fall 2017 cycle.

 

Hana El-Sagini is a Cairo-born multidisciplinary artist based in Dubai. Notable achievements include her 2018 solo show at Zamalek Art Gallery, participation in ‘Something else Off Biennale,’ and receiving The Dean Collection Award. She continued her artistic journey in Düsseldorf, Berlin’s Universität Der Künst, and received her MFA from Basel’s Institute Kunst. Her work was also part of the Fondation Beyeler’s 25th Anniversary exhibition. In 2023, her piece “The Big Blue Slipper” was acquired by Rotterdam’s Fenix Museum. She is currently part of the Campus Art Dubai 10.0 X Public Art group.

 

‘Realiity' is the collective duo Saeed Almadani and Ahmad AlAttar, who intend to explore the intersection between art and technology. 

 

Saeed AlMadani holds a Master’s degree in printmaking from the Royal College of Art in London. His practice draws on elements of conceptual, minimalist, scientific and abstract strategies, where he explores the relationship between identity and place, and the process of writing and non-representational art in articulating attachments and in (de)constructing identities. His work also questions how objects and performance combined allow for the construction of meaning, obsession and a sense of place. In 2014, Saeed completed the Sheikha Salama Foundation and Rhode Island School of Design Emerging Artist Fellowship. He was the recipient of the Abraaj Innovation Scholarship Award and the Salama Emerging Artist Scholarship. 

 

The 421 Artistic Development Program is an exhibition process that emphasizes the professional and creative development of its participating artists. Conceived as a commissioning exhibition, participating artists are supported by experienced art educators and/or a senior curator from the region, along with the 421 team, through a structured educational model of production, towards a major exhibition.

 

This program opens opportunities to UAE-based artists with rigorous and sustained practices and allows them space to continue to experiment. It also encourages artists to think deeply about the reception of their work in a public institution and the connection, communication, and multidimensional interaction with their communities and the ways different communities interact with their exhibition.