Foundland is an art collective founded in 2009 in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

Syrian Syrians () are the majority inhabitants of Syria, indigenous to the Levant, most of whom have Arabic, especially its Levantine and Mesopotamian dialects, as a mother tongue. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend ...

artist Ghalia Elsrakbi and South African artist, Lauren Alexander. The name Foundland was chosen by the two artists because it suggests using found objects and art, but also that it's about "reclaiming." The collective is based in

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

and Amsterdam.

About

Elsrakbi was born in

Damascus Damascus ( , ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, largest city of Syria. It is the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. Kno ...

in 1978 and lived in Syria until 2000. She studied in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

where she attended the Sandberg Institute in

, graduating in 2009. Here she met South African artist, Lauren Alexander, and together they created the art group, Foundland. In 2007 she returned to Damascus and visited regularly until "it became too dangerous." She eventually moved to

in 2012. Alexander was born

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

in 1983. She has a bachelor's degree in graphic design from the

University of Stellenbosch Stellenbosch University (SU) (, ) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant university in Sub-Sahara ...

and a Masters in Design from the Sandberg Institute. In 2015, Foundland was included on the shortlist for the

Prix de Rome The Prix de Rome () or Grand Prix de Rome was a French scholarship for arts students, initially for painters and sculptors, that was established in 1663 during the reign of Louis XIV of France. Winners were awarded a bursary that allowed them t ...

Work

Elsrakbi feels that it is important to live in the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

so that she and her art collective can "be a bridge between two cultures." Elsrakbi and Foundland began to focus on themes relating to Arab politics after the

2011 Syrian uprising The Syrian revolution, also known as the Syrian Revolution of Dignity, was a series of mass protests and civilian uprisings throughout Syria – with a subsequent violent reaction by the Ba'athist regime – lasting from 15 March 2011 to 8 De ...

. Alexander feels that she and Elsrakbi have a similar approach to art and subject matter, which is what drew them together. Foundland's work uses graphic design elements mixed with drawings, video and photography. Elsrakbi and Alexander find media and social media observations and reports about the Middle East, using these to create a

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

of both visual art and information. They then make connections based on the information they have found and "create alternate narratives to media reporting through innovative image making and personal interpretation."

References

External links

Official site

What is Beyond an Image
(video)
Leaderless design
(video) Arts organizations established in 2009 Dutch artist groups and collectives Syrian women artists South African women artists {{ACArt