ROZNAMA STUDIO PROGRAM IN COLLABORATION WITH D-CAF

Roznama

Side Events

Medrar For Contemporary Art and D-CAF

1 November 2017 - 30 November 2017

Roznama Studio Program 
In Collaboration with D-CAF 

In November 2017, Medrar, in collaboration with jury members, issued a statement explaining the reasons behind the cancellation of the sixth edition of the Roznama competition. D-CAF responded to the statement by inviting Medrar to structure its visual arts program in 2018. The conversations between Medrar and D-CAF built on a shared interest to support Egyptian artists and facilitate the existence of more spaces for sustainable artistic production within our shared local contexts.

Ahmed Badry, Mohamed Abdelkarim, and Nour El Safoury have been invited by Medrar to design and run the program over a period of six months. Fellows in the program will engage together in a space that aspires to contextualize artistic practice within a critical, theoretical framework that supports the making of new projects. The program is structured around a series of individual and group exchanges, working groups, and visits from and to artists and academics. It supports production and defrays some of the costs entailed in participating through offering a symbolic scholarship and studio working spaces.

 About the program 

The program relies on several intersecting lines of inquiry. Together, they explore the situatedness of the artist within her or his surrounding environments and contexts, including matters such as language and material, history and power, and notions around labour and art. We will re-question aesthetic concepts such as beauty, originality, authenticity, and uniqueness by appropriating them within a speculative and investigative artistic process.

Over the period of six months, participants will engage in a number of activities that intersect with and feed into the artistic process. These include writing, watching, listening, tasting, moving, experimenting with materials, and site visits. The program includes both internal collaborators who will work together throughout the period of the program as well as a group of external advisors whom every participant will consult throughout the six months. Two group criticism sessions, to whom different visitors will be invited, will form the structuring backbone of this program and give it direction.

 The program is designed by 

  • Ahmed Badry
  • Mohamed Abdelkarim
  • Nour El Safoury

Medrar was delighted by D-CAF’s invitation and took it as an occasion to revisit some of the ideas, frustrations, and concerns aired in an open house discussion that brought together applicants from the cancelled Roznama competition this past November. These discussions were the main motivation for suggesting the Roznama Studio program.