MENTORSHIP BUILDING BEYOND
By the Prince Claus Fund & Creative Industries Fund NL
We are pleased to announce the 12 artists who will be reimagining the future of their cities through design and creative problem-solving as part of the Building Beyond mentorship programme in 2023.
The 12 selected artists come from 9 countries and work in a wide range of design fields including architecture, urbanism, digital design, visual arts, photography, research and performance. They will be guided by four mentors who are experts in architecture, art and design: artist, architect, critical space practitioner from Sudan, Ola Hassanain; architectural researcher, designer, and performer from South Africa, Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk; curator and cultural practitioner from Morocco Hicham Bouzid; a co-founder of WOROFILA, a collective of architects and engineers from Senegal & Cameroon Nzinga B. Mboup.
The artists will work on projects that re-imagine the future of public space, community and functionality in their own contexts. The program aims to foster thought leadership, promote criticality, reframe design-based practices, and contribute to an ongoing conversation on how creative practices rooted in locality and community can lead to new perspectives and promote transformative urban agendas.
Get to know the artists
Ana Raquel Machava | Mozambique
Architect and urbanist with a special interest in urban interventions that bring together the youth and the arts in the production of knowledge.
Arafa C. Hamadi | Tanzania
Multidisciplinary artist aiming to create fully immersive spaces that explore their queerness in relation to space - focusing on joy and tangible ways of connecting their community.
Blqees Zuhair | Libya
Architect and curator investigating how space and sociality are formed and influenced by the surrounding regional contexts.
Helen Zeru | Ethiopia
Zeru's work emphasises issues of centering marginalised societies in Ethiopia, creating new narratives, and providing ways to tell their own stories.
Jepkorir Rose | Kenya
A curator who, alongside artists and affiliating practices, works to create opportunities and spaces to encounter each other in areas of interest.
Mika’il, the Muezzin | South Africa
Storyteller, translator and social sculptor whose work centers around spatial storytelling and design for social impact.
Neec Nonso | Nigeria
Visual artist working in photography, performance, and augmented reality driven by a desire to catalyze critical conversations and evoke emotions in his audiences.
Olufemi Hinson Yovo | Benin
Architect and artist, founder of a research-based studio in Cotonou, SAH STUDIO, which develops ideas and projects that explore their local context with a focus on decolonising architecture.
Rania Atef | Egypt
Visual artist exploring the notion of play and investigating the infrastructure of care, motherhood, and reproductive art labour discourses on both individual and collective scales.
Sara Fahkry Ismail | Egypt
Visual artist, performance maker, and somatics practitioner whose work negotiates relationships between bodily space and spatial and social realities, focusing on emotion and sensation as tangible information.
Chidumaga Uzoma Orji | Nigeria
Visual and experiential artist and creative technologist concerned with unpacking post-colonial crises of identity, fuelling imagination in service of progressive African futures.
Wezile Harmans | South Africa
Visual art practitioner whose interdisciplinary practice encompasses performance, video, installation, and mixed-media artworks as a tool for social change.
The Creative Industries Fund NL is the Dutch cultural fund for design, architecture, digital culture and every imaginable crossover. The Fund supports remarkable and innovative projects, research and activities by designers, makers and cultural organisations in the creative industry.
Through various schemes and open calls, the Fund’s Internationalisation programme aims to promote international exchange and collaboration with the Dutch creative industry. One specific component is the international programme Inclusive Cities and Societies through Design, through which the Fund stimulates the contribution of design to the Sustainable Development Goals (11 and 16). For this programme component, the Fund focuses on (knowledge) exchange between the Dutch creative industry and African creative industries. The Building Beyond Mentorship and partnership with the Prins Claus Fonds are part of this programme.
