Staatliche Akademie der Künste (State Academy of Arts) in Stuttgart hired Egyptian artist Heba Y. Amin (*1980, Cairo) as the new Professor for Digital and Time-Based Art.

Amin’s teaching at the ABK Stuttgart is based on a research-led, practical approach with the aim of developing new models for knowledge visualization in relation to digital and time-based art. The students should not only look at the techniques from a purely benefit-oriented perspective, but rather put them into a corresponding context through practical application and experience. It does so within a historical and contemporary framework that includes marginalized voices and narratives from the Global South. For 2022, the participation of the students in Heba Y. Amin’s class is planned for the 2022 Festival of the KulturRegion Stuttgart, which is curated by the cultural anthropologist Julian Warner. Under the working title “Livable”, the festival will focus on the value of diverse life and the effects of ecological and technological change and the means of artistic research into the crisis of nature, man and technology. Cross-border artistic productions are planned as part of the project, which will enable an intensive exchange between Heba Y. Amin’s students and institutions in Africa.

Amin’s teaching will promote artistic practice through forms of production that continuously question existing paradigms and introduce alternative approaches to redesigning techno-aesthetics and imaginary future scenarios. In her role as an artist and teacher, Amin would like to contribute to viewing the contemporary art discourse through a critical lens. However, the consideration should be shaped by experience and practice and not just by canonical texts. An educational approach that will enable students to identify crucial contexts for themselves in order to create works that engage with the contemporary art world and beyond.

Heba Y. Amin completed her Master of Fine Arts in 2009 at the University of Minnesota, USA, and in 2017 a postgraduate scholarship at the Digital Cultures Research Lab at Leuphana University Lüneburg. She is co-founder of the Black Athena Collective, curator of visual arts for MIZNA magazine, and currently sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Digital War. Heba Y. Amin received the Sussmann Artist Award 2020, which is awarded to artists who campaign for democratic and anti-fascist ideals. In 2019 she was accepted into the New York Fellowship Program “Field of Vision”.

Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, including The Mosaic Rooms, London (2021), Art Prize Exhibition Böttcherstraße, Bremen (2018), Eye Film Museum, Amsterdam (2020), Quai Branly Museum, Paris (2020), MAXXI Museum, Rome (2018) ), Liverpool Biennale (2021), 10th Berlin Biennale (2018), 15th Istanbul Biennale (2017) and 12th Dak’Art Biennale (2016), to name just a few. Her latest work “Heba Y. Amin: The General’s Stork” was recently published by Sternberg Press (2020). The New York Times, The Guardian, the Intercept and the BBC reported on their work and interventions.

In her artistic work, Amin deals with political issues and archive history. For this she uses media such as film, photography, archive material, lecture performances and installations. In her research-based art projects, she deals in particular with the convergence of politics, technology and architecture and pursues a speculative, often satirical, approach to question narrative patterns of conquest and control. In doing so, Amin is looking for tactics of subversion and other techniques that make it possible to reflect on dominant historical narratives about a critical spatial practice.

hebaamin.com