Open Studios

Join us during Alserkal Lates for Open Studios at Warehouse 51 from 7:30-9pm to meet and learn about the research and practices of our current residents filmmaker Iram Ghufran, researcher Anahi Alviso-Marino, artist Sophie Cundale, and writer Skye Arundhati Thomas.

Biographies

Iram Ghufran is a filmmaker, researcher and educator based in New Delhi, India. Her work engages with speculative modes of storytelling, and her interests span the realm of techno spectral forms, nonhuman agency, micro practices of futurity and mythopoesis. Iram’s work has been screened widely within art and cinematic contexts including Experimenta India, Forum Expanded at Berlinale, Tate Modern, Hong-Gah Museum, Dhaka Art Summit, Arsenal 4 and Visible Evidence 21 among others. Iram has won several awards for her films including two National Film Awards (2012), Mary Kay First Prize at the International Women's Film Festival, Seoul (2012), and a special Jury Mention at SAARC Film Festival, Colombo (2016). She was short-listed for the Tim Hetherington Visionary Award (2016). Iram is currently working on her doctoral film and thesis at the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM), University of Westminster, London.

Anahi Alviso-Marino specializes in political sociology of visual arts in the Arabian Peninsula and is currently co-coordinator and postdoctoral fellow at the collective “Penser l’urbain par l’image,” Ecole des Ponts ParisTech/University Gustave Eiffel. She obtained her PhD in Political Science at the University Paris 1-Sorbonne and the University of Lausanne, her MA from Columbia University in New York, and her BA from Complutense University in Madrid. She works at the intersection of social sciences and artistic practices and has exhibited her archival and research materials at the Palais de Tokyo (“The enemy of my enemy” by Neïl Beloufa, 2018) and at the Villa Vassilieff (“One of many stories. Art worlds in Yemen,” 2017). Her forthcoming book focuses on art and politics in Yemen, and she is currently working on a research-creation project dedicated to mapping monument biographies of the Arabian Peninsula supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the EUR ArTeC.

Sophie Cundale is an artist working with film and sculpture, based in London. Recent film work has been commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and exhibited as a solo show at South London Gallery and Bonington Gallery, a new body of sculptural work was exhibited at Kapp Kapp Gallery, Philadelphia in a duo show with Penny Goring. Previous work has been commissioned by Serpentine Galleries; and shown at Temporary Gallery, Cologne, Spike Island, Bristol, Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Zealand, Catalyst Arts, AMINI festival, Belfast, VCD festival, Beijing and Innsbruck Biennale, Austria; and hosted on vdrome.org.

Skye Arundhati Thomas is a writer and editor based in Goa, India. She writes for The London Review of Books, artforum,Frieze, e-flux and others. She is co-editor of The White Review. Her work pays special attention to contemporary politics, culture, and the histories of South Asia. Her first book, Remember the Details, on viral images, courtrooms, and a brief history of a protest movement, is out now with Floating Opera Press.