12Gates & PAAFF's Contemporary Video Art Exhibition 2024
Experimental, Contemporary video art
South and South-West Asia, North Africa (SSWANA)
The 6th iteration of the Contemporary Video Art Exhibition celebrates contemporary video art—that is, contemporary art using recorded moving images—created by artists from South and South-West Asia, North Africa (SSWANA), as well as artists of indentured Indian descent and their diasporas. This 6th edition of the juried show will be co-presented by Twelve Gates Arts (12G) and the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival (PAAFF). Film screenings will take place at Twelve Gates Arts Gallery on Saturday, Nov 2nd, 12 PM - 2 PM and on Wednesday, Nov 6th, 5 PM - 7:30 PM.
Subjects and themes for the exhibit include queer, controversial, poetic, abstract, political, philosophical, uncensored – anything that stretches beyond conventional. We look forward to producing a thought-provoking and inspiring exhibit to follow the well-received exhibits in 2015, 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2023 which drew submissions from contemporary artists across the globe.
About the selectors, producers, curators, and jury:
Ms. Masud-Elias, originally from Dhaka, Bangladesh, is Chief Counsel for the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania and, as general counsel, oversees all aspects of the University's clinical and scientific research collaboration activities in oncology.
She previously was a corporate transactional lawyer in private practice focusing on the healthcare and life sciences industries for 11+ years. She holds several volunteer leadership and fundraising roles with various nonprofit and professional organizations and has been recognized for her professional achievements by a number of legal publications in the United States. She is a graduate of the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston's Business on Board program.
She holds a Masters in Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), a JD from Columbia University School of Law, and a BA in English and Physics from Amherst College and the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH).
She is a poet whose aspiration is to challenge essentialist notions of what South Asian immigrant narratives does/can be. She has published poems in collected editions and journals and written essays for a Leeway Foundation grant-funded food blog. She is the recipient of the 2021 William Carlos Williams/Peregrine Prize from the American Academy of Poets and the 2022 Universe in Verse Prize from the Kelly Writers House at UPenn, and hosts and curates the quarterly 12G Poetic Circle at Twelve Gates Arts.
Atif Sheikh is the co-founder of 12G and a resident curator. Sheikh has curated art exhibitions such as "Not so black & white" 2010, "Cinephiliac" 2013, perform(art)ive 2015, Lived Experiences 2016, "I Bear Witness" 2016, "Take It Like A ... ; Contemporary Trends In The Aesthetics Of Violence” 2019, and co-curated "New Asian Futurisms" at Asian Arts Initiative 2019 and "Breathing Room" at Leonard Pearlstein Gallery 2020. He was on the jury twice for the Women’s Voices Now Film Festival, at Fleisher Art Memorial’s Wind Challenge Exhibition in 2019, and the 12G Contemporary Video Arts Exhibition since 2015.
Arzhang Zafar is a writer and film programmer based in Philadelphia, currently serving as a festival programming director for the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival. Arzhang is originally from the Bay Area and has a background in video art and both critical and creative writing.
We are accepting submissions until Sat, Aug 31, 2024 at FilmFreeWay and participants will be notified of their submissions by Sat, September 7, 2024!