RAP Grantees (2019)

Research on the Arts Program: Grantees of the Second Cycle (2019)

“Memory of Sounds and Music, Ma’amal El Sukkar St. 18” by Yasser Naeim | Ali Atef | Mohamed Yasser El-Safadi - (Egypt)

“Traditional Performance Arts in the North of Morocco: Documentation, Study, and Presentation of Developmental and Artistic Investment Prospect” by Jamal Abarnous - (Morocco)

“Arts et Pouvoir : Recherche sur l'instrumentalisation de l'art et de la Culture au Maroc » by Aadel Essaadani | Mohamed Sammouni | Dounia Benslimane - (Morocco) - Association Racines

“Arabic Sources on Music” by Anas Ghourab | Manel Dali | Mouheb Ben Ltaief | Mohamed Amine Bouallagui - (Tunisia)

“Artistic Action: Collective Notes” by Jana Traboulsi | Nadine Bekdache | Karma Tohme - (Lebanon)

“Unpacking the #SudanUprising: Art, Artificial Intelligence & Grassroots Activism” by Andariya - Oumnia Shawkat | Ruba Musadag | Reem Abbas | Tagwa Warrag - (Sudan)

Jack Persekian is Founder and Director of Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art and Gallery Anadiel. Previously, held the position of Director and Head Curator of the Palestinian Museum (2012–2015); Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation (2009–2011); Artistic Director of the Sharjah Biennial (2007–2011); Head Curator of the Sharjah Biennial (2004–2007); Founder and Artistic Director of The Jerusalem Show (2007–present), and Qalandiya International (2012-2014). Exhibitions and projects include: Past Tense, Birzeit University Museum, and the Jerusalem Quarterly, Spring 2019 – Issue 77, Institute of Jerusalem Studies; at the Municipality of Ramallah and Mousa Afandi Center in Jerusalem, (2019); The Khalidi Library Jerusalem: Knowledge, Place and Time – Inaugural exhibition (2018); After Matson, Albright Institute, Jerusalem (2017); In the Presence of the Holy See, Bethlehem and Dheisheh Refugee Camp (2014); Nablus Soap performances (2010-12) at the Beirut Art Center; Abu Dhabi Art (with Tarek Atoui); ICA London; Hammer Museum – LA, MIT – Boston; MoMA – NY; The New Museum – NY; Rote Fabrik – Zurich; Darat Al Funun – Amman; Artspace – Sydney; the Adelaide Festival of Arts, Australia; Wall of Soap at the World Economic Forum, the Dead Sea Movenpick, Jordan (2004). Persekian is recipient of the Order of Culture, Science and Arts, Innovation level, from the State of Palestine (2016). Persekian lives and works in Jerusalem.

Driss Ksikes is an award-winning Moroccan playwright, novelist, magazine editor, media and culture scholar. He has been called “one of the most innovative writers in Morocco today”, was named in 2012 “one of the six best African playwrights” by the National Studio Theatre in London and was nominated by SACD and Maison des Auteurs in 2017 for the prize of Best Francophone playwright. He is the Director of the Centre d’Etudes Sociales, Economiques et Managériales (Cesem-HEM) in Rabat, the editor in chief of the journal Economia, and the author of numerous plays and novels. His 2014 book, co-authored with political scientist Fatma Aït Mous, Le Métier d’Intellectuel: Dialogues avec Quinze Penseurs du Maroc (The Intellectual Profession: Interviews with 15 Moroccan Thinkers) won the 2015 Prix Grand Atlas, Morocco’s most prestigious book prize.

Maha Maamoun is a Cairo-based Egyptian artist. Her work is generally interested in examining the form, function and currency of common cultural visual and literary images as an entry point to investigating the cultural fabric that we weave and are weaved into. She also works collaboratively on independent publishing and curatorial projects. She is a founding board member of the Contemporary Image Collective (CiC) – an independent non-profit space for art and culture founded in Cairo in 2004. She is also co-founder and co-director of the independent publishing platform Kayfa ta - an independent publishing intitiative, bookseries and curatorial platform, that most recently curated How to reappear: Through the quivering leaves of independent publishing – an expansive show on independent publishing initiatives at the Beirut Art Center (BAC), Beirut.

Tarek El Ariss is Professor and Chair of Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College. His work examines notions of modernity, nation, community, and technology in Arabic literature, culture, media, and art. His books include Trials of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political (2013), The Arab Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology of the Nahda (2018), and Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals: Arab Culture in the Digital Age (2019).

Walid Sadek is an artist and writer living in Beirut. He is Professor and currently chair of the department of Fine Arts and Art History at the American University of Beirut. He studied at the California State University of Long Beach (BFA 1990) and The Claremont Graduate School of Art (MFA 1992). His early work investigates the familial legacies of the Lebanese civil war. His later work proposes a theory for a post-war society disinclined to resume normative living. His artworks and written texts seek a poetics for a sociality governed by the logic of protracted war and search for eruptive temporalities to challenge that same protractedness. His more recent artworks and published texts propose a theory for a post-war society disinclined to resume normative living: Love is Blind at Modern Art Oxford, 2006; Dear Stephen in Rumours as Media, Istanbul, 2006; Knowledge of the Expelled at the Gwangju Biennial, 2007; Mourning in the Presence of the Corpse in the Lebanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennial, 2007; On Learning to See Less at HomeWorks IV, Beirut, 2009; Inside Mourning in the Presence of the Corpse at the Hordaland Art Centre, Norway, 2014; “From Image to Corpse” (Naked Punch, 2006); “Place at Last” (Art Journal, 2007); “Seeing Rude and Erudite” (Third Text, 2007); “Peddling time when standing still, art remains and the globalization that was” (Globalization and Contemporary Art, 2011); “Collecting the Uncanny and the Labor of Missing” (Collecting Practices in the Middle East: Alternative Visions of the Past, 2012); “In the Presence of the Corpse” (Third Text, 2012).