Qatar

Past Resident
2024: Fire Station - Qatar Museums

Fouz Saif

Based in Doha, Qatar, Fouz Saif makes both hyper realistic depictions and abstract compositions. Recently she has embarked on a series of stone carvings.

Fouz Saif has exhibited work at 2022 EuroExpoArt, Italy; Expo 2020, Dubai; and Expo 2023 Doha, Qatar, among others.

Fouz Saif, horse, 2021, oil painting.

Fouz Saif, hacking, 2022, oil painting.

Fouz Saif, portrait, 2021, pastel.

Fouz Saif, smoking, 2019, mix media.

Fouz Saif, smoking, 2021, acrylics.

Residents from Qatar

Adriane de Souza

Qatar, Brazil

Fire Station - Qatar Museums

Studio #209

Dana Agal

United States, Qatar

Fire Station - Qatar Museums

2025

Muneera Al-Buainain

Qatar

Fire Station - Qatar Museums

2024

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Czech Republic

Past Resident
2024: International Visegrad Fund

Nikola Ivanov

Nikola Ivanov is an intermedia artist with a background in photography, primarily working with video and text. His artistic exploration delves into themes encompassing sleep, biopolitics, time, and memory. Recently graduating from the PhD program at the Academy of Arts Architecture & Design in Prague, his dissertation project focuses on the concept of night colonization. It proposes illuminating the Earth by deploying satellites equipped with orbiting mirrors.

Nikola Ivanov has exhibited work at Galerie UM, Czech Republic; Czech Centre in Sofia, Bulgaria; and East Slovak Gallery, Slovakia, among others.

A man sitting in the gallery in front of an ellipse-shaped projection on a marble floor surrounded by a black ellipse-shaped carpet.

Nikola Ivanov, Second Sun, 2022, video installation.

A black and white multi-channel video installation on the gallery walls consisting of a projection of photographs of empty citylights on the left wall, a spinning fan in a night room, a shot of a night street in Seoul, a caption to an audio track on the middle wall, a white graph on a black background on the right, and a shot of a circular satellite with a reflective surface of mirrors.

Nikola Ivanov, Dear Blake, 2022, video installation.

A scan of the book from which we can see the front cover where there is a night black and white photograph of the glow from a large greenhouse for growing vegetables with the inscription Rest In Restless Times: the Biopolitics of Sleep and Wakefulness, the name of the editor Nikola Ivanov and the publishing house Host, in the middle there is a black spine with the title of the book and the name of the author, on the back there are the names of the authors of the book and annotation in black letters on a white background.

Nikola Ivanov, Rest In Restless Times, 2021, book.

A three-channel video projection in the gallery, on the left wall is a white numerical description of the time in hours, minutes and seconds, on the middle wall is a shot from the film The Man Who Wasn't There where Billy Bob Thornton sits in a white barber's coat and sleeps, on the ceiling is a projection simulating the shadows formed by car lights on the ceiling of the night rooms around the road.

Nikola Ivanov, Day For Night, 2017, video installation.

Square black and white photograph at night with flash showing corner of road with bollards, low fence, security camera and metal telescope on base.

Nikola Ivanov, Anonymous Zones, 2010, photograph.

Residents from Czech Republic

Adrián Kriška

Slovakia, Czech Republic

International Visegrad Fund

2024

Ezra Šimek

Czech Republic

International Visegrad Fund

2023

Radek Brousil

Czech Republic

International Visegrad Fund

2022

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Italy

Past Resident
2024: Italian Council - Directorate-General for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries (DGAAP) at the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities

Curator

Chiara Ianeselli

Dr. Ianeselli earned her Ph.D. in Cultural Heritage Analysis and Management from the IMT School for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy. Renowned for her curatorial projects and exhibition coordination, she has contributed to dOCUMENTA (13), the 14th Istanbul Biennial, and documenta fifteen. Specializing in research-based creative initiatives, multidisciplinary collaborations, and trans-historical perspectives, she is particularly interested in experimental approaches. By combining art-historical research with contemporary debates on collection accessibility, she promotes methodological inquiries in exhibition making. Currently, she is developing MAXXI Med in Sicily.

Dr. Ianeselli has curated exhibitions at Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Italy; and de Waag, Netherlands, among others.

Events & Exhibitions

Curators at Work: Labeless Labels in Museums, Chiara Ianeselli on Cultural Accessibility

July 24, 2024, 5:00–6:00pm

Quel jour sommes-nous, 15-30 June 2022, co-curated with Bakul Patki, at Tokonoma, Kassel. Credit: Rene Graf. quel jour sommes-nous? (what day is it?) is a research project in the form of an exhibition that questions what makes an artwork - investigating the performativity and process of an exhibit, the acts that brought it into existence, and the context of its presentation. Featuring seventeen established and emerging artists, quel jour sommes-nous? explores the differing forms, lifespans, and pathways of artworks – with historicised and timeless, appropriated and reapproriated, unauthored and unauthorised, dismantled and intangible works, all of which sit beside a graduate piece that will be graded in situ, just ahead of the exhibition’s opening. An “unfinished” work will also be included. The concept of a finished work of art – one that is deemed ready to be shared – has been debated throughout art history, particularly in relation to potential different readings once it has been pulled from a definite temporal context. Continuing the contentious conversation around when a piece of art is complete, one work in progress will be taken from an artist’s studio, at a time of the curators’ choosing, and inserted into the exhibition. quel jour sommes-nous? reflects upon the evolution of the creative process – the choices, challenges and breakthroughs that come with making art – asking when, within this process, does something become a work of art, and who gets to decide? On which day is something ready to be sold or exhibited? Is today the day the artist has to surrender a work they might never see again? Extending this reflection on when a work comes into existence, the exhibition also asks whether it is possible for artworks to exist without an audience. How much is the public required for the creative process to be complete, and how preeminent is the artist’s vision in influencing the viewer’s experience of the work? quel jour sommes-nous? does not profess to answer these questions, but hopes to encourage examination and inspire further exploration. It is at once exhibition as research and research as exhibition

Curated by Chiara Ianeselli and Bakul Patki, Quel jour sommes-nous, 2022. TOKONOMA, Kassel, Germany. Photo by Rene Graf.

documenta fifteen, installation view, 2022, Kassel, Germany. Photo by Nicolas Wefers.

L’originale Solo show Curator Carlo Benvenuto with G. Maraniello, D. Ferrari, M. Gioni Mart, Rovereto, IT 2020, June 26 - October 16 Carlo Benvenuto presents a large exhibition at the Mart, designed for the spaces of the museum and assigning a cameo role to its collections. During his 20+-year career, the photography medium has privileged Benvenuto’s ability to examine the world closely, and phenomenologically, elevating his vision to a perceptive and sentimental verification of life. He does so by contemplating what appears familiar, domestic and intimate, exploring the mute insistence of the objects he portrays and bringing the long preparatory phases of his work to conclusion in the immediacy of the camera shot. In this universe of objects, furniture and mirrors, the narrator, and the private mythology, are silent: the works are untitled, their function is not to describe. The apparently pictorial quality of the captured images and their surprising compositional equilibriums immortalise an extraordinary metaphysic perception of everyday life. The virtuous classic mood of Benvenuto’s work begs comparisons with the grand art of the 20th century, going beyond the contingency of the historical period and evoking, as emphasised by Massimiliano Gioni in his text in the catalogue, the suspended atmosphere of Magical Realism, the rigour and the sobriety of Luigi Ghirri or the obsession for details of Domenico Gnoli, mini metaphysic theatres of de Chirico, Savinio and de Pisis and the careful orchestration of the image found in the still life paintings of Giorgio Morandi. “Carlo Benvenuto. The Original” presents a selection of approximately sixty works created since the 1990s: here, photos, sculptures and paintings all create a single large metaphysical composition. The exhibition – states the artist - “is in an ideal orbit around a centre containing four types of self-portrait”. The exhibition is accompanied by a rich catalogue that includes a long essay on the work of Carlo Benvenuto proposed by Gianfranco Maraniello, a critical piece by Massimiliano Gioni, a comment by Daniela Ferrari on the self-portraits of Morandi, de Chirico and Guttuso included in the exhibition and a conversation between Chiara Ianeselli and Carlo Benvenuto on the themes of the exposition at the Mart, and more general matters relating to the artist’s poetics.

Carlo Benvenuto, L'originale, 2020, curated by G. Maraniello, D. Ferrari, and M. Gioni at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto, Italy. Photo by Jacopo Salvi.

Gare de l’Est Group show Curator Nicola Samorì Alberto Burri Gustave Joseph Witkowski Anatomy Theatre University of Padova, Palazzo del Bo 2016, December 13 - 2017, March 14. Credit: Rolando Paolo Guerzoni Les Gares is an exhibition that is part of a research project that began in 2014 and focuses on Europe’s anatomy theatre and the concept of vision. Scientists, plant neurobiologists, anatomy historians, architects, meteorite collectors, and lunar explorers all contribute to contemporary art’s exploration of these historical sites. The Anatomy Theatre at the University of Padua is the oldest extant building of this kind, having been completed in 1595 under the instruction of the famous professor of Anatomy Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente. For the first time, works by Alberto Burri (Città di Castello, 1915 - Nice, 1995), Nicola Samor (Forl, 1977), and Gustave Joseph Witkowski (Nevers, 1844 - Paris, 1922) were brought together in a capillary discussion centered on vision and the instrument of sight, the exhibition’s main theme. Continuous differences in the lenses, instruments utilized, and observation positions allowed a marble root to be brought closer to a lunar piece, which was enlivened by the epidermal surface of a Cretto by Alberto Burri. An exhibition that, on the one hand, highlights the historical-artistic heritage of anatomy theatres by reconstructuing historical and scientific events, and on the other hand, suggests new interpretations through artworks inspired by interdisciplinary dialogues. The initiative, organized by Chiara Ianeselli has been supported by Giovanna Valenzano and Maurizio Rippa Bonati, and by the University of Padua.

Nicola Samorì, Alberto Burri, and Gustave Joseph Witkowski , Gare de l’Est, 2017, Palazzo Bo and Anatomical Theatre, Padova, Italy. Photo by Rolando Paolo Guerzoni.