Valentin Nouja<\/strong>\u00ef<\/strong>m stated: <\/strong>“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.”<\/em><\/p>\n “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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThis 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.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n The Jury stated: <\/strong>“The jury was particularly impressed by Valentin Nouja<\/em>\u00ef<\/em>m<\/em>\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201c<\/em>Valentin Nouja<\/em>\u00ef<\/em>m<\/em>\u2019s films offer a distinctive approach to the city and architecture, treating them not only as\u00a0 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.<\/em><\/p>\n 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.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Valentin Nouja\u00efm is a Franco\u2011Lebanese artist and filmmaker based between Paris and Athens. A graduate of La F\u00e9mis and former guest student at the St\u00e4delschule, his practice spans film, video and visual art. Nouja\u00efm\u2019s work examines architectures and spaces shaped by power and collapse, moving between documentary and fiction to create layered, essayistic films. He is the author of the trilogy La D\u00e9fense \u2014 Pacific Club (2023), To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion (2024) and Demons to Diamonds (2025) \u2014 and has shown at MoMA, Centre Pompidou, ICA London, Kunsthalle Basel and others. He participated in the Istanbul Biennale (2025) and the Thessaloniki Biennale (2026).<\/p>\n The final jury was chaired by Han Nefkens, founder of the Han Nefkens Foundation, and composed of Alenka Gregori\u010d (artistic director, Cukrarna Gallery, Ljubljana); Alenka Trebu\u0161ak (curator, Cukrarna Gallery, Ljubljana); Viktor Neumann (director, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn); Katerina Gregos (director, Stamatis Schizakis (Lens-based and New Media Curator, EM\u03a3T, Athens); Ioli Tzanetaki (curator\/exhibitions advisor, EM\u03a3T, Athens); Deniz Ova (executive director, Salt, Istanbul); Amira Akb\u0131y\u0131ko\u011flu (research and programs, Salt, Istanbul), Mariangela Mendez Prencke (director, Havremagasinet L\u00e4nskonsthall Boden); Peipei Han (director of exhibitions, Fotografiska Shanghai) and Cristiana Perrella (director, MACRO, Rome), in the presence of Hilde Teerlinck and Alessandra Biscaro, Director and coordinator of the Han Nefkens Foundation.<\/p>\n A group of internationally recognised art critics, curators and artists, nominated by the partner institutions of the grant, was appointed to carry out the scouting process, with each scout inviting two artists to participate. For this edition, the scouts were: Myriam Amroun, Carolina Ciuti, Duygu Demir, G\u00fcrsoy Do\u011fta\u015f, \u00d6v\u00fcl Durmu\u015fo\u011flu, Matthieu Lelievre, Mikhail Karikis, Maria Thalia Carras, Tea Paci, Victoria Sacco, Ekrem Serdar and Fang Yan.<\/p>\n From the long-list, the jury members first selected a shortlist of nine artists, which was then presented to the final jury. The shortlisted artists were: Adon Raida (Palestine), Claudia Claremi (Spain), Marianne Fahmy (Egypt), Valentin Nouja\u00efm (France\/Lebanon), Janis Rafa (Greece), Aykan Safo\u011flu (Germany\/Turkey), Hasan \u00d6zg\u00fcr Top (Turkey), Deniz Tortum (Turkey\/USA), Nat\u00e1lia Trejbalov\u00e1 (Slovakia\/Italy).<\/p>\n The Han Nefkens Foundation is pleased to announce that Valentin Nouja\u00efm (b. 1991, France\/Lebanon) is the recipient of the Han Nefkens Foundation \u2013 Mediterranean Video Art Production Grant 2026, presented in collaboration with EM\u03a3T, the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens); Cukrarna Gallery (Ljubljana); Bonner Kunstverein (Bonn); Havremagasinet L\u00e4nskonsthall (Boden); Fotografiska Shanghai; Salt (Istanbul); and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":96716,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-exhibition-post.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96720,"href":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96717\/revisions\/96720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.emst.gr\/web3\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Mediterranean-Video-Art-Production-Grant-2026-1-300x71.jpg\")
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