Wide Awake Art Contest

ICTJ is pleased to announce the Wide Awake Art Contest, an open call to Lebanese and Tunisian artists as well as artists living in Lebanon or Tunisia to explore the theme “the Sound of Dissent.” The contest will showcase works by those who are documenting and memorializing their communities’ stories in times of instability, resistance, and change. ICTJ invites contestants to share an original creation that deals with this theme and their reflections on it.

A prestigious panel of jurists will select six finalists based on the criteria of artistic quality, technical mastery, and originality.

Fill in this application form and submit your artwork via email to: [email protected] before February 18, 2022: https://forms.office.com/r/qCtPFzqC5M

Cash Prizes

First-place finalist receives $3,000

Second-place finalist receives $2,000

Third-place finalist receives $1,500

Fourth-place finalist receives $1,000

Fifth-place finalist receives $500

Sixth-place finalist receives $500

The Jury

Ashekman is a street art group based in Beirut, Lebanon, founded by Lebanese artists Omar and Mohamed Kabbani in 2001. Ashekman serves as a creative outlet and platform to combat social and political injustice and extremism in the Middle East and challenge the false propaganda about the region. Identical twins born in the early '80s amid the Lebanese Civil War, the Kabbani brothers have experienced several wars in their lifetime, which have shaped them personally and as artists.

Dorra Dalila Cheffi is a Finnish-Tunisian artist. She holds a BA from Aalto University School of Art, Design, and Architecture in Helsinki with a minor in sculpture and painting. She also graduated from Pekka Halonen Academy in Tuusula, Finland, with a concentration in photography. Her works are part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art Al Maaden in Marrakesh, as well as private collections in Amsterdam, Helsinki, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Tunis, and Zurich.

Mouna Karray is a Tunisian photographer and video artist. She studied cinema and photography at the Institut Supérieur d’Animation Culturelle in Tunisia and later graduated from the Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics and Arts with an MA in Image Media. Her solo exhibitions include Off-the-Air, held at the Roger Ballen Foundation Centre for Photography within the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town in 2017; Nobody Will Talk About Us, held at the Tyburn Gallery in London in 2016; Murmurer, held at the Galerie El Marsa in Tunis in 2011; and The Cut-Out, held at Diwan Dar el Jeld de la Medina in Tunis in 2004.

Reem Shadid is a cultural organizer, researcher, and curator focusing on the emancipatory possibilities of art and exploring the ways it intersects with ecological, political, and socioeconomic realities. She is the producer and host of Radio Alhara’s Listening with Reem Shadid, a program dedicated to music and art, as well as Aridity Lines, a podcast commissioned by TBA21–Academy and coproduced by Radio Ma3azef about climate change and other ecological issues in the southeastern Mediterranean region. Shadid is also a contributing editor at Infrasonica, a digital platform devoted to non-Western cultures. Previously, she served as Deputy Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, where she worked in various capacities from 2006 to 2020.

Paola Mounla is Lebanese-Canadian communication and advertising professional who has 15 years of experience working in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). She is the founder of  Art of Thawra, an Instagram platform curating art from the Lebanese revolution. Created in October 2019, Art of Thawra acts as a virtual museum of the Lebanese revolution and has showcased more than 1,000 works. Her achievements in advertising have been recognized at regional and international award shows such as Cannes Lions, D&AD, Clio, New York Festivals, Lisbon Ad Festival, the Dubai Lynx, MENA Effies, the Loeries, and many more.