R—recently—won the Alkazi Foundation’s Theatre-Photography Grant. With the support, she gets to work on her project Akam for the next year and present her work at the end of term. She’d applied last year and had won a special mention so this is doubly sweet. Here is what the three-person-jury had to say.

…it speaks to her own anxieties and dreams and nightmares. But, especially in times of COVID, being able to see her work or the range of work she’s doing, where it feels like something deeper is being tapped into, which feels of the time—not only of the time, obviously. But the greater sort of anxieties that we are enveloped in, and how they seem to be bubbling onto the surface—that is a really really fascinating thing. — Monica Narula, Artist and Curator, Raqs Media Collective

In the way she was photographing her experience, there is a certain sense of horror, which is very evident in cinema but not really present in photography—at least in the context of South Asia. — Munem Wasif, Photographer and Film-maker

We thought that was an interesting space for development. Project Akam blurs the line between the personal and intimate, and what populates a shared imagination. — Marie-Nour Hechaime, Curator, Sursock Museum

Here is the foundation’s Instagram update announcing the winner. (Here is a direct link if you prefer the no-popup experience and prefer to focus on the video. Update: here is the foundation webpage with a convenient video-embed.) Thanks to COVID-related travel-restrictions and some hardware SNAFUs, R had to greatly reduce the scope of setting-up and shooting the images. The low-light-noise in the images is both a production-side-effect and is really effective.

R’s already put a lot of herself into the project and speaks excitedly about all the potential offshoots to it. She’s working on some of the background research and we will—fingers crossed—work on a publication, together, later. I think the project—eventually—deserves a treatment that can do justice to all the film-like-grains in the images and the general grain of the subject. Can’t wait to pick the stock for this one.