Vantage Point Sharjah 11 spotlights early-career photographers from Africa and Asia

Vantage Point Sharjah (VPS), an annual photography exhibition by Sharjah Art Foundation, will return for its 11th edition this week. Featuring four artists and one collective whose work challenges established notions of photographic practices, the exhibition will run from October 14, 2023, to January 14, 2024, at Old Al Diwan Al Amiri in Al Hamriyah, Sharjah.

This year, VPS identifies and supports early-career photographers who were born in Africa and Asia, are currently based there, or are part of the diaspora.

Chosen through an international open call that received more than 350 applications, the selected artists embody diverse approaches but share overlapping tendencies — the pursuit of contemporary image-making techniques, the recontextualisation of found or inherited images and engagement with the visual afterlives of colonialist legacies.

Oumaima Abaraghe (b. 1999, Casablanca) uses collage techniques and digital manipulation to reconstruct Morocco’s fragmentary colonial archive, signalling its inherent fallibility. Yashna Kaul (b. 1995, Mumbai) unearths the secrets embedded in her family’s photo album and reveals how the framing of a moment can shape personal histories and collective memory. Through emotive storytelling, Mohamed Mahdy (b. 1996, Giza) documents the displacement of the fishing community of El Maks, Alexandria, and captures the generational impact of urban redevelopment policies. Questioning the aspirations of nation-state imagery, Postbox Ghana [Nana Ofosu Adjei (b. 1993, Accra), Courage Dzidula Kpodo (b. 1999, Kumasi) and Manuela Nebuloni (b. 1986, Milan)] resituate popular postcard images of post-independence Ghana within the country’s contemporary urban landscape. Clea Rekhou (b. 1988, Paris) contrasts a series of soft-lit, intimate family portraits with narratives of generational violence, suggesting the complexity of human relationships.

Works by these emerging artists will be displayed in two exhibition modes: independent presentations of the artists’ individual practices and a communal storytelling space that interweaves their combined practices.

VPS 11 introduces a one-on-one professional mentoring programme. Participating artists will be paired with cultural practitioners or industry professionals of their choice so that they can improve their skills and take advantage of a unique learning experience led by experts in the field.

Introduced in 2013 to cultivate public engagement with photography as an artistic medium, VPS has evolved into a dynamic platform that embraces multiple approaches to photography, from photojournalism and photo essays to experimental work in both analogue and digital forms.

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