SAF announces winners of first PARA Fellowship for art writers

The open call received 235 applications, with submissions coming from a range of countries across Asia and Africa, including India, Egypt, UAE, South Africa, Pakistan, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Philippines, Singapore and South Korea.

The recipients of the fellowship are: Adwait Singh (Agra, India); Le Huu Hoang Anh (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Taipei, Taiwan); Samantha Del Castillo (Caloocan City, Philippines); Wabwire Ian Joseph (Kampala, Uganda); and Youyou Wang (Beijing, China).

The selected fellows will benefit from one-on-one sessions with five mentors from the fields of art criticism, history, curation, publishing, cultural theory, teaching and journalism, namely Charis Poon, Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, Nada Shabout, Russel Hlongwane and Sabih Ahmed.

As well as the mentoring sessions, the five fellows will receive a range of material, communal and institutional support. The original texts they submitted will be published in a compilation, and they will develop a new piece of art criticism which will be included in an anthology. Additionally, they will be hosted in Sharjah for a week-long programme of visits, workshops and peer-led gatherings, as well as be offered the opportunity to foster transnational networks through collaborations with other cultural practitioners.

About the fellows

Adwait Singh is an independent curator and writer from Agra, India. Devoted to contextualising alternative practices in South Asia, their work probes the intersection of ecology, animism, subjectivity formation and biopolitics. Notable recent curations include the fifth edition of the Mardin Biennial (Mardin, 2022) and the 15th edition of the Queer Arts Festival (Vancouver, 2022).

Le Huu Hoang Anh, based between Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Taipei, Taiwan, is an aspiring art historian and researcher. She is currently pursuing an MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art at the National Taipei University of Education. Her research inhabits the intersections of contemporary art, craft and the environment, with an emphasis on the regional as well as historical specificities of Southeast Asia.

Samantha Del Castillo is a writer and activist based in Caloocan City, Philippines. She was associate editor of the newspaper Philippine Collegian. In 2023, she won the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for Art Criticism, which granted her a column in ArtAsiaPacific. She is pursuing an MSc in Media, Culture and Society at the University of Glasgow.

Wabwire Ian Joseph is a cultural strategist, creative producer and writer based in Kampala, Uganda. As a contributor to ArtNews, Artsy and policy journals, his writing spotlights contemporary African artist and reflects a deep commitment to decolonial narratives. He co-founded the Culture & Art Community Impact Fund Africa (CACIFA) and leads and designs programmes for KQ Hub Africa. 

Youyou Wang is an art historian, writer and curator of public practice at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, China. Wang’s critical practice interrogates modes of perception and articulates alternative art-historical narratives. She holds an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art. 

About the mentors

Charis Poon is an artist and educator who makes zines and audio pieces, draws comics and writes. She teaches Social Design at the Hong Kong PolyU School of Design where she experiments with how teaching and learning happen. Her practice considers poetics in communication, learning through making, slow growth and collective endeavours.

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie is a writer and critic and the author of Etel Adnan (2018) and Beautiful, Gruesome, and True: Artists at Work in the Face of War (2022). She has written for Artforum, Frieze, Aperture, Mousse, Bookforum, Afterall, Parkett, 4Columns, E-Flux Criticism, Art Journal, ARTMargins, The Village Voice, and The New York Times, among other publications.

Nada Shabout is a Regents Professor of Art History and the Coordinator of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Initiative (CAMCSI) at the University of North Texas. She is currently a Visiting Professor of Art History and a Senior Investigator at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of art at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD).

Russel Hlongwane is a cultural producer from Durban, South Africa. His work enquires about the effects of heritage, modernity, culture and tradition on Black life (in South Africa). He works in the modes of artistic research, cultural production, performance, design theory, writing, film and curatorship.

Sabih Ahmed is a curator, culture theorist and educator. His work focuses on modern and contemporary art mapped through global itineraries and inter-disciplinary formations. Sabih is the Co-Artistic Director of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2026 with Nora Razian and serves as a Projects Advisor at the Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai.

About the jury

In its inaugural year the jury comprised members of all four partner organisations: Rahaab Allana from Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, Paul C. Fermin from Asia Art Archive, Yvette Mutumba from Contemporary And (C&) and Jyoti Dhar from Sharjah Art Foundation.

Jury statement

We were thrilled by the remarkable range of applications submitted in PARA’s inaugural year—a clear signal of the urgency and necessity of supporting alternative, inquiring, speculative and personal writing from Asia and Africa. The shortlisted fellows’ texts were rigorous in their theoretical arguments; deft, sharp and compelling in terms of their formulation; and critically astute in how they centred artistic practices and processes. Selected fellows also privileged storytelling as well as the joy and pleasure inherent in the act of reading and writing. The finalists signalled an openness to experimenting with form and a willingness to collaborate and build on their practices in a sustained manner. This year’s cohort includes cultural strategists and activists, practitioners interrogating climate change and shifting technologies as well as writers attuned to institutional critique and decolonial narratives. We believe PARA will serve as a vital space for them to deepen and expand the questions they are already pursuing in their local contexts—while also engaging with the transcontinental networks and interdisciplinary resources that the programme offers.