Open call for the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia (MENASA) region

Warehouse421, the Abu Dhabi home-grown arts and design center dedicated to showcasing and nurturing creative production across the region, announces its open calls for the year 2021, all designed to support emerging practitioners in the MENASA region. The open calls fall under the Capacity-Building programs, which continue to evolve from insights identified through focus groups and studying the response to Warehouse421’s general public programs. 

All applications are available online here. 

Artistic research grant
Application deadline: June 26

The grant is open to emerging artists within the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia regions and supports practice-based research investigating new social questions through interdisciplinary methodologies. Creative practitioners can work through disciplines including but not limited to visual art and curations, design and technology, literary arts, culinary arts, music, theater, and performance. Warehouse421 will award the grantees a budget of up to approximately 75,000 AED to support their research and project. Interested applicants can apply for the grant starting May 16 until June 26, 2021. 

The grant targets topics that investigate the intersections of these disciplines with social and cultural issues, such as communal and public spaces, languages and linguistics, transportation and mobility systems, urbanity and its social and cultural fabric, economics and migration, and art institutions and ecosystems.

The grant will support social inquiry in creative disciplines. Practitioners whose research methodology is tactile and experiential, including material experimentation alongside community engagement, and whose outcomes extend beyond contributing to academia to include experiences, accessible content, and experiential artworks, are especially encouraged to apply.

Research applications can include but are not limited to performances, school or public programming, symposia, or exhibitions.

Curatorial development exhibition program (Future Perfect: Catastrophe and the Contemporary)
Application deadline: July 3, 2021

Warehouse421 and the Bombay Institute for Critical Analysis and Research (BICAR) invite curators from within the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia regions to propose a group exhibition and publication on “Future Perfect: Catastrophe and the Contemporary.” Future perfect is a perspective of the future on what the past (our present) will have been if we do not think, act, and create in the here and now of contemporary catastrophe. The curatorial development program will entail rigorous study, artist and artwork selection, and writing on the future perfect, a tense introduced with modern science’s revolutionary break from ‘animism’ and the contemporary aesthetic turn to perspective. 

The successful curator/curatorial collective will receive a curatorial fee of 20,000 AED, in addition to an entirely produced exhibition. The selected curator/curatorial collective will participate in a structured program in the English language, which will take place from August 2021 until February 2022. The program includes a weekly colloquium/workshop of readings, discussions, and presentations with invited and selected philosophers, historians, artists, curators, critics, and creative writers working on the theme; and a one-on-one mentoring with BICAR and Warehouse421 faculty and staff to realize the publication and exhibition, scheduled to open in February 2022 at Warehouse421. 

Homebound Residency program: DIGITAL COMMUNITIES  
Application deadline: August 7, 2021

After the successful first iteration of the Homebound Residency program, Warehouse421 launches its second iteration with the theme, DIGITAL COMMUNITIES. The Homebound Residency program is open to creative practitioners of all disciplines over 21 years of age- including, without limitation to, visual arts & curation, design & technology, theatre & performance, literary arts, culinary arts, and music—from within the MENASA region.

Led by guest-curator Reem Shadid, successful applicants will be awarded a production budget of up to approximately 20,000 AED to be employed for any equipment or material required to complete and realize their projects. The six-month program will culminate in an online presentation of processes and works. 

The Warehouse421 open-calls program also includes the Internship and Mentorship program, in addition to the Artistic Development Exhibition program, an exhibition process that emphasizes participating creative practitioners’ professional and creative development, In collaboration with The Institute for Emerging Art.