Ugandan Artist Koloto Siraji Among Winners of 2022 Prince Claus Mentorship Awards

Koloto Siraji, a Ugandan artist is among 12 recipients of the 2022 Mentorship Awards for Cultural & Artistic Responses to Environmental Change. The awards are sponsored by Prince Claus Fund together with the Goethe-Institut.

Siraji is a multidisciplinary artist, teacher and researcher. Mainly focused on dance and exploring the Bagisu philosophies of dance and art, his practice embraces and celebrates the Bagisu cultures through the lens of modernity.

Floods and forest fires, storms and disappearing species: the climate crisis is being felt everywhere around the globe. Artists and cultural practitioners are responding to the crisis, engaging their communities, proposing inventive solutions and imagining alternative futures.

The Mentorship Awards for Cultural & Artistic Responses to Environmental Change bring together 12 emerging artists and cultural practitioners from around the world in a year-long interdisciplinary programme.

They are supported by four mentors as well as their peers and work at accelerating their engaged community-based practices addressing environmental issues.

The group is guided by: scientist and gender diversity advocate Brigitte Baptiste; Etcétera Collective formed by Federico Zukerfeld & Loreto Garín Guzman and artist and academic Serkan Taycan.

This year’s Awardees work in a variety of disciplines, from architecture, photography and visual arts to biotech, sound art and research, with most working in multiple disciplines. They come from 11 different countries, including Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Uganda, South Africa, Kyrgyzstan, India, China and the Philippines.

They include; Koloto Siraji (Uganda), Renzo Alva Hurtado (Activist, visual artist and documentary filmmaker from Peru), Guely Morato Loredo (Curator, sound artist and researcher from Bolivia), Tamzyn Botha (Interdisciplinary artist from South Africa), Maya Quilolo (Artist & researcher from Brazil), Benji Boyadgian from Palestine.

Others are; Long Pan (Artist and researcher from China), Prin Rodriguez  (Photographer from Peru), Paribartana Mohanty (a Multimedia artist, working with video, storytelling, writing and painting from India), Razcel Jan Salvarita (A transdisciplinary creative activist from the Philippines), Daniel Godínez Nivón (Visual artist from Mexico) and Bermet Borubaeva (Multidisciplinary artist, curator, urban environmentalist and labour rights activist from Kyrgyzstan).