(October - December 2007)

Sarai hosted Jamil Yamani, artist and Louisa Dawson, sculptor, from Australia. They ran a collaborative workshop with a marginalised community in Delhi.The collaboration facilitated the production of the participants own short experimental documentaries, between three and five minutes each. The result was nine video works on HIV/AIDS.


Jamil Yamani

Jamil works within the areas of migration, cultural identity, borders and diaspora.

Jamil continues to explore migration, identity and other related themes within his work. While he was originally apprenticed to Professor Ernst Fuchs, in Vienna, Austria as a painter, he went on to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours First Class and a Masters of Fine Arts from the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. He majored in Video Art, an area in which he still practices today, binding technology with a special interest in social phenomena.

His work has been exhibited at artspace Sydney, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Perth, Performance Space, Sydney, Customs House, Circular Quay, Sydney, Space 3, Sydney, COFA Exhibition and Performance Space, UNSW, Sydney. His collaborative work has been exhibited in Taipei, Taiwan, Broken Hill, NSW, Gallery 4A, Sydney and Electrofringe, Newcastle. His screen-based work has been shown in Sydney and internationally, and he has given occasional guest lectures most notably at the Sydney arm of Boston University, USA. He has also collaborated with Professor David Malin to create the first new media visual component to accompany the work of a major Australian Composer (Ross Edwards) and presented in pre-eminent concert venues including the Adelaide Town Hall and the Sydney Opera House.

His latest work The Glittering City exhibited at Campbelltown Arts Centre was multi-screen video and multi-channel audio embedded video sculpture. Advice and mentorship was provided by two pioneering artists, Allan Giddy, a senior lecturer in electronic arts and Jeffrey Shaw a former Professor from ZKM but currently a director of iCinema, Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, COFA, UNSW.
Visit his website: jamilyamani.com


Louisa Dawson
    
Louisa completed her Masters of Fine Arts at COFA, UNSW in the year 2007. She has exhibited widely in Sydney and overseas, exhibitions include: The 2004 and 2005 "Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award" in Melbourne, where she received the Peoples Choice Award 2004 and the Emerging Artist Award 2005, "Sculpture by the Sea" in 2001 and 2005, Casula Powerhouse, Artspace, and the "Dresden Stadtfest" in Germany. She has also received the 'Ian Potter Foundation" grant. She received the  ISCP Residency, New York, Australia Council and RIPE Award, Art and Australia and the ANZ Bank in 2007

Her recent exhibitions have been Moving House: The Renovation of the Everyday, Ivan Dougherty Gallery, Sydney, Australia (2007) (Solo) and Business and Pleasure: Temporary Visitors, Suite 7/11, New York (2007) (Group).
To know more about her, visit her website at www.louisadawson.com