Afra Al Dhaheri

Misk Art Grant is an annual, pioneering initiative launched by Misk Art Institute in 2020 to support and promote emerging and mid-career artists and designers by offering them the opportunity to realize their dream projects. The first of its kind in the Kingdom, each edition of the Grant presents a theme, mentorship programs with curators, and specialists as well as technical support.

The Grant’s 2021 edition widens its geographic borders to include artists and designers from the Middle East and North Africa alongside Saudi nationals. Applicants are invited to submit proposals as groups or individual artists practicing visual art, painting, sculpture, photography, or multidisciplinary art.

Additionally, the Institute has doubled the Grant funds to 1,000,000 Saudi Riyals (USD 266,632). The chosen theme for the Grant’s second edition is UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Grant theme for 2021

As our globalization efforts increase and begin to adopt new technologies and infrastructures, resulting in dramatic structural and cultural changes, we continue to learn, grow, and undergo rapid developments. As we move past western orientalist fantasies, the Arab region has morphed into reconstructed urban cities while looking for the balance between cultural homogeny and a holistic reconstruction of identity representation. In this sense, we have not told our full story yet, we are incomplete, ongoing, and the possibilities are endless. Prompting the question, are we still "under construction"?

The second annual Misk Art Grant's theme, 'Under Construction', derives from the symbolic state of Arab society as emerging cultural hubs concerned with perspective. In particular, how identity is perceived as an emblem of growth, continuity, and endless iterations of cultural representations throughout history. Artists and designers from the Middle East and North Africa are invited to address the theme as a process of displacement, repetition, distortion, and incompleteness in a time of synthesis, understanding, and promise for the future. As we attempt to reconfigure our identity within the Arab world's diverse framework, how can you reconstruct the understanding of your identity to encompass the notion of being ongoing or ‘under construction’?