The Han Nefkens Foundation is pleased to announce that Valentin Noujaïm (b. 1991, France/Lebanon) is the recipient of the first edition of the Han Nefkens Foundation—Mediterranean Video Art Production Grant 2026, presented in collaboration with EMST, the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens); Cukrarna Gallery (Ljubljana); Bonner Kunstverein (Bonn); Havremagasinet Länskonsthall (Boden); Fotografiska Shanghai; Salt (Istanbul); and MACRO (Rome).
The Jury stated: “The jury was particularly impressed by Valentin Noujaïm’s original contribution to moving-image practice and his willingness to embark on a new phase in his artistic development.We believe this grant can provide meaningful support for the continued growth of a promising and evolving body of work.”
“Valentin Noujaïm’s films offer a distinctive approach to the city and architecture, treating them not only as physical environments and spaces but as living organisms shaped by memory, surveillance, and systems of social control. Through a compelling interplay of image and sound, he creates deeply human and poignant, poetic reflections on contemporary urban life, addressing timely questions of gentrification, corporate aesthetics, alienation, displacement, and belonging.
The jury also valued his innovative blending of fact and fiction, past and future, as well as his integration of diverse filmmaking techniques which range from the documentary to the speculative. This hybrid approach expands the possibilities of cinematic storytelling and demonstrates a strong potential for further artistic exploration.”
The Han Nefkens Foundation—Mediterranean Video Art Production Grant—organised thanks to an initiative by Katerina Gregos, Director of EMST—supports the production of new screen‑based video artworks by artists living in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The winner receives 25,000 EUR for the creation of a new work, which will be presented by all partner institutions.
Valentin Noujaïm stated: “I make films and works about spaces that were built to last forever and are already ruins. About bodies that move through architectures designed to exclude them.”
"I am drawn to collapse, not as catastrophe, but as a slow condition. The way power sediments into concrete, into urban planning, into the image. But I am equally drawn to what haunts these spaces after the fact: the shadows that remain when institutions hollow out, the angels that appear where no one thought to look. Evil, in my work, is not exceptional. It is infrastructural. It is the logic quietly embedded in the places we enter every day, in the borders we cross, in the words being used.”
“This grant represents something rare in the life of an artist: the permission to follow a question before it has fully formed. To research without justifying. Making films, for me, is a way of making sense of what cannot yet be said: dark images stuck from childhood, feelings that outlast their causes, ideas that arrive before their meaning does. For the trust and space to do that work, I am deeply honoured to receive the Han Nefkens Foundation grant.”
The final jury was chaired by Han Nefkens and composed of Alenka Gregorič and Alenka Trebušak (artistic director and curator, Cukrarna Gallery, Ljubljana); Viktor Neumann (director, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn); Katerina Gregos, Stamatis Schizakis and Ioli Tzanetaki (director, Lens-based and New Media Curator and curator/exhibitions advisor, EMST, Athens); Deniz Ova and Amira Akbıyıkoğlu (executive director and programmer, Salt, Istanbul); Mariangela Mendez Prencke (director, Havremagasinet Länskonsthall Boden); Peipei Han (director of exhibitions, Fotografiska Shanghai) and Cristiana Perrella (artistic director, MACRO, Rome), in the presence of Hilde Teerlinck and Alessandra Biscaro, Director and coordinator of the Han Nefkens Foundation.
The Foundation and the institutions are grateful to the invaluable support of an international panel of experts, including Myriam Amroun, Carolina Ciuti, Duygu Demir, Gürsoy Doğtaş, Övül Durmuşoğlu, Matthieu Lelievre, Mikhail Karikis, Maria Thalia Carras, Tea Paci, Victoria Sacco, Ekrem Serdar and Fang Yan.
The shortlisted artists were: Adon Raida (Palestine), Claudia Claremi (Spain), Marianne Fahmy (Egypt), Valentin Noujaïm (France/Lebanon), Janis Rafa (Greece), Aykan Safoğlu (Germany/Turkey), Hasan Özgür Top (Turkey), Deniz Tortum (Turkey/USA), Natália Trejbalová (Slovakia/Italy).
Download the press release.
