Four former and current fellows receive prestigious grant from the Prince Claus Fund and the Goethe-Institut

In 2018, the Prince Claus Fund together with the Goethe-Institut started to issue a yearly Call for Proposals to support cultural and artistic initiatives and projects that are concerned with environmental issues all over the world. In June 2020, they called for »Cultural and Artistic Responses to Environmental Change«. We are happy to congratulate four – three former and one current – Solitude fellows for receiving a grant of up to Euro 20.000 to develop and realise their projects in the coming year. The grantees are Mica Cabildo (fellow 2014/2015), Maxwell Mutanda (fellow 2020/2021), Sahar Qawasmi (fellow 2014), and Nida Sinnokrot (fellow 2011/2012).

 

Michelle Angelica »Mica« Cabildo, Whitehead’s Ark
Mica Cabildo is working as an art director, graphic designer, illustrator and artist in Metro Manila/Philippines. Her granted project Whitehead’s Ark is a web-based art installation, for which she researches the work of English explorer and naturalist John Whitehead and his studies about Philippine’s birds and its nature in the late 19th century. The web project tells an interactive story combining natural history from a Western perspective and an alternative cosmology based on the belief systems and local knowledge of indigenous peoples.

→ Website: http://mica-cabildo.com

 

Maxwell Mutanda, Milestones
Maxwell Mutanda is a multidisciplinary researcher, visual artist and designer from Harare/Zimbabwe. He uses meticulously detailed collages and architectural practice to create sustainable participatory design. He is a co-founder of the design research firm Studio [D] Tale which explores social and environmental issues across disciplines including architecture, urban transit, migration, and product innovation. Maxwell receives the grant for his current project Milestones. The work will question the role of architecture and nature in the choreography of daily life by highlighting the complex spatiality of urban commons/community spaces of Harare’s vleis (wetlands) which allow for religious worship, sustainable livelihoods, climate change adaptability and safeguarding biodiversity.

→ Website: https://maxwellmutanda.com

 

Sakiya – Art, Science & Agriculture (Sahar Qawasmi and Nida Sinnokrot), Storytelling Stones – The Art, Ecology and Mythology of Dry Stack Stonewalls in Palestine
Sakiya is a progressive academy for experimental knowledge production and sharing, grafting local agrarian traditions of self-sufficiency with contemporary art and ecological practices. It was established by the visual artist Nida Sinnokrot (fellow 2011/2012) and the Palestinian architect Sahar Qawasmi (fellow 2014). They received the grant for their current communal project Storytelling Stones – The Art, Ecology and Mythology of Dry Stack Stonewalls in Palestine. Together with artists, researchers and stonemasons of the region, Sakiya wants to bring back the art and craft of the ancient technique »Sanasel« (dry stack stonewalls) and expand it with a multifunctional transmitter/receiver sensory system.

→ Website: https://sakiya.org

Find more information about the Grant for »Cultural and Artistic Responses to Environmental Change« 2020 and its recipients on the websites of Prince Claus Fund and Goethe-Institut.