The Sudkulturfonds has developed this grant to support 100 artists from eligible countries in the global south and east in the early stages of their careers. The grant of CHF 1,000 recognises artistic achievement and brings awarded artists to the attention of cultural promoters and presenters in Switzerland, despite travel restrictions.
The call for entries is open to artists and art collectives from eligible countries working across all art forms. Eligible artists are in the early stages of their creative development and aim to advance their careers by building new professional networks, particularly in the Swiss cultural market. Applicants are requested to submit a profile video created for this call. There is no application fee.
The 100 Artists open call is a response to the pandemic-related travel restrictions. For artists from partner countries of the Sudkulturfonds, access to the cultural markets and professional networks in Switzerland and Europe has been largely cut off. In turn, many events and opportunities for Swiss cultural promoters and presenters to identify and meet emerging artists from across the globe have disappeared. This call for entries is part of a longer-term strategy to initiate virtual relationships, build and support digital networks, and draw attention to the diverse artistic achievements in the global south and east despite limited mobility. The grant aims at strengthening the professional and financial livelihoods of eligible artists early in their professional journey and promote their presence within the Swiss cultural market.
The Sudkulturfonds is managed by artlink.
Eligibility
Professional artists and art collectives across all art disciplines who are both from and based in one of the eligible countries in Africa, Latin America, Southeast and Southwest Asia and East Europe (Non-EU countries). Please consult the DAC List of ODA Recipients to check if the country where you live, and work, is listed. The 100 Artists open call specifically supports artists and art collectives who are in the early stage of their careers with 2-10 years of professional experience. This grant was developed for artists and art collectives who have yet to be substantially recognised within their field, the media, funding circles or the public at large.
Required materials
- Artist profile video
- Video transcription in English
- Biography
- 1-2 work samples
- Completed application form
Evaluation criteria
We assess the submitted artist profile video’s relevance to the objective of the open call, which is to bring the creative achievement of artists who are at an early stage in their careers, to the attention of cultural presenters within their field. Applications will be reviewed based on the submitted video profile, with equal weight assigned to the quality and clarity of the artwork and the video statement. This call for entries is open for applications from artists working across a broad range of disciplines, mediums and cultural regions. On this note, we don’t impose specific narrative or aesthetic guidelines, provided that the terms of compliance are respected which can be found below. The video should be representative of the artist’s personality and highlight the practice in a manner that sparks an interest to learn more. The technical considerations to be accounted for is that the quality is sufficient to translate the artist’s intention.
Applicants may consider the following when developing their profile video:
- What medium do you work in?
- Why do you create? Influences? Inspirations?
- How do you go about making your work? Do you have a distinctive process that is important to understand?
- What do you want the viewer of your video to do next?
Jury
The applications are juried against the same criteria by a transdisciplinary and international jury made up of experts with knowledge and experience in the area under review. artlink staff review applications for eligibility and completeness before making them available to the jury. Meet the jurors below.
What the recipient receives
The amount of the 100 Artists grant is CHF 1,000. In addition, the recognition of the grant recipients will be promoted to our broad network of arts and cultural promoters and presenters, particularly in Switzerland.
Timeline
Call for entries opens: April 1, 2022
Submission deadline: May 8, 2022 (23:59 UTC +2)
Grant recipients announced: July 4-8, 2022
Application process
- Eligibility check
Before applying, please check the eligibility country list, it includes the names of all the countries from which artist applications are accepted. - Register as a user
A valid email address is required to register as a Sudkulturfonds user and receive your personal login. Register on this page to your right. - Login
Use your login to access the online application form for 100 Artists. - Complete online application form
The online application form provides the template to submit all information including the artist profile video and supporting documents. Mandatory information is marked in the application form with an asterisk (). You can choose to view and submit the application form in English or French. Please select either French or English to view the application form – ignore German and Italian*. Each application is password-protected by the user’s login and can be accessed and edited later. - Submit application
Submit your complete application by May 8, 2022 (23.59 UTC +2). Submissions are accepted only through this online application system. You will receive an email confirming receipt of your submission. Applicants are notified of the jury’s final decision within the first two weeks of July 2022.
Juror Information
Nimi Ravindran (Sandbox Collective)
Nimi Ravindran is a writer and theatre director who has worked in the theatre in various capacities for nearly 20 years. She is the co-founder and artistic director of Sandbox Collective. She holds a senior fellowship in Theatre from the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. As a theatre director she has directed over 10 full length theatre productions and several workshop productions over the last 15 years. She is an integral part of The Company Theatre Workspace in rural Maharashtra and is the festival director of The Kamshet Arts Festival held there biannually. Her areas of interest are art, gender, sexuality, freedom of expression and access to the arts.
Meera Menezes (CultureLoop)
Menezes is an art writer and independent curator. She is the Delhi correspondent of Art India andhas been with the magazine since its inception. She has written extensively on modern and contemporary Indian art over the past three decades and is the author of V.S. Gaitonde: Sonata of Solitude. She is a regular contributor to the international arts publication Artforum and has contributed to the The Hindu, Mint, Take on Art, The Indian Quarterly, The Wire, Firstpost and Critical Collective among others. Her most recent curatorial projects include Phantom Limb (2019) for the Raza Foundation and Shadow Lines: Experiments with Light, Line and Liminality(2019),which brought together several generations of Indian artists exploring abstraction. Menezes has done her Masters in German Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and has worked as a TV-journalist and producer at the South Asia Bureau of ARD, Germany’s largest public service broadcaster, for over a decade. Meera is now a member of CultureLoop, a network of individuals from around the world, who bring on board local expertise from the region they belong to.
Clarissa Diniz
Clarissa Diniz is a Brazilian curator and writer. Holds an MA in art history at UERJ and is currently a PhD candidate in anthropology at UFRJ (Rio de Janeiro). She is currently a lecturer at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage. She was editor of Tatuí magazine from 2006 to 2015 and curator at the Museu de Arte do Rio from 2013 to 2018. She has curated, among other, Todo mundo é, exceto quem não é – 13ª Bienal Naifs do Brasil (São Paulo, 2016); Dja Guata Porã – Rio de Janeiro Indígena (co-curated with Sandra Benites, Pablo Lafuente and José Ribamar Bessa. MAR, 2017) and À Nordeste (co-curated with Bitu Cassundé and Marcelo Campos. São Paulo, 2019).
Ericka Florez
Ericka’s work takes the form of performative exhibitions, public programs, and publications. As part of her curatorial work she has written and performed what she calls “danceable lectures” in which she uses her experience of listening and dancing to salsa music to explore how the experience of rhythm helps to understand -in a bodily way- the notion of antagonism and how this enriches our notion of otherness. Her texts are published in different catalogues in Colombia and abroad, and also in mediums such as Revista Errata, Arcadia, Terremoto: arte contemporáneo en las Américas, and the USB Map Initiative of the Guggenheim Museum. Her interest in art and education led her to co-found La Nocturna, a platform to experiment on discursive and pedagogical formats. As part of her exploration on how we learn through our bodies and what a new education of the senses could be, she co-created an afterschool for kids and family where she designs a curriculum based on education through art.
Refilwe Nkomo
Refilwe Nkomo is a Johannesburg based multidisciplinary artist, curator, educator and producer creating cultural and artistic interventions, programmes and installations using various mediums including performance, video, text and dance at the intersection of arts and social justice. Her research and performance have been the recipient of numerous awards and presented in South Africa, South Korea, Ghana, Botswana, Brazil, Germany and the United States of America. She has founded and co-founded numerous organisations and platforms including We Are Here, a non-profit organization working with men and boys to dismantle gender based violence. She is a 2019/2020 Clore Chevening Fellow and one of 2020’s M&G 200 Young South Africans. She was recently the Director of VANSA (Visual Arts Network of South Africa). She is interested in memory, the archive, feminism, black performance theory, trauma, affect, and social change.
Nuits Balnéaires
Born in Abidjan, 1994, Nuits Balnéaires is an Ivorian visual artist based in Grand-Bassam. A key player in the Ivorian art scene, his practice oscillates between photography and film. Searching for a deeper connection, Nuits Balnéaires has always been inspired by the energy emanating from the coast of the Gulf of Guinea and has formed an intense spiritual relationship with this landscape, hence the omnipresence of water and sea in his work. His artist name, Nuits Balnéaires, expresses the quintessence of this feeling – the space where all the natural elements take on their full power. Nuits Balnéaires creates work that transcends geographical space, creating room for our shared stories to be told.
Olivier Chow
Olivier Chow is a Swiss-Chinese citizen of the world, educated in Geneva, London and the field, a political scientist and art historian with a PhD on the aesthetics of cruelty from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is the Founding Director of Foreign Agent, a young and dynamic contemporary art gallery based in Lausanne, Switzerland, showcasing emerging and established contemporary artists and designers from Africa and the Diaspora in a uniquely curated afro-futuristic environment. In a previous life, he worked for UNESCO in Paris and for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Kabul, Phnom Penh, Goma, Skopje, Kigali, Tel Aviv, Conakry, Port-au-Prince, Niamey, Geneva and Pretoria. He has published for Tate papers, Sotheby’s, the International Review of the Red Cross and other peer-reviewed publications.