Artist Nadim Choufi has been awarded Art Jameel Commissions: Digital for his winning proposal that embraces the theme of smart cities and the time cycles that govern its foundations. Choufi’s winning project, titled The Sky Oscillates Between Eternity and Its Immediate Consequences, digitally renders environments of a space colony on Earth, where two narrators attempt to unbound the perpetually promised possibilities in imagining the future and creating a space of multiple presents to question the clock running the planet through their lived experiences. The work will debut online and be accessible via Art Jameel’s websites.
Recognising the diversity of ideas and exceptional quality of the proposals received, the jury opted to also award honourable mentions to two applicants: Nora Al Badri, a multidisciplinary and conceptual media artist based in Berlin, and Beirut-based duo Edwin Nasr and Bassem Saad.
Launched earlier this year, Art Jameel Commissions: Digital invited artists to submit proposals through an online Open Call which attracted nearly 200 project submissions; the winning work is to be launched and exhibited online for at least six months in early 2021. The commission also provides an opportunity for mentoring by technical experts from MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL). Responding to this year’s theme of ‘Time’, and thinking through how the concept of time has been challenged by technology and circumstance, the commission presented artists with an opportunity to rethink “digital art” and the ways in which it can question, investigate and form meaningful connections and experiences.
The winning proposal was selected by an esteemed, experts which included: Nadim Samman, Curator for the Digital Sphere, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; digital and organic media artist Jenna Sutela; and publisher and Chief Technology Officer at the Serpentine Galleries, London Ben Vickers.
Art Jameel Commissions is an annual, multi-year programme foundational to programming at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai’s contemporary arts institution and a hub for exhibitions, educational and research initiatives. This year’s commissioning programme’s digital focus simultaneously addresses Art Jameel’s long-standing commitment to a diverse, global public and current heightened realities of physical isolation. The next iteration of Art Jameel Commissions will centre on painting and drawing, with the Open Call taking place in 2021.
