Abdul Halik Azeez awarded residency at Verzasca Foto

 

Sri Lankan photographer Abdul Halik Azeez has been awarded a residency at Verzasca Foto in Switzerland.  Halik will be artist-in-residence here from 10 June to 21 July 2019, along with other professional photographers chosen from around the world. 

Abdul Halik Azeez (@colombedouin) is a visual artist based in Colombo Sri Lanka. His rise to prominence as an artist took place through Instagram, and the platform remains a primary means through which Halik creates work and reaches an audience. Text plays a key role in his work, in the form of journal entries, zines and Instagram posts. His approach to image making embraces the public realms of media and print technology. Jettisoning the materiality of the photograph’s traditional quality within the fine arts, he not only experiments with the definition of form and display but also questions the forms art can take. An abiding quality across his practice is his ability to work with the pedestrian and mundane, making images that tell stories about poetic yet moving instances of the violence and truths of the everyday.

Verzasca Foto is a residency-cum-photo festival held mainly at the small alpine village of Sonogno and other parts of the Verzasca Valley, nestled in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. The festival aims to promote emerging international photographers and to support visual arts in Southern Switzerland, by giving free space through connection and dialogues with nature, offering access to different forms of expression and ways of visual storytelling. Activities like nocturnal projections in the grottos and piazzas of the Verzasca Valley, workshops, round tables, concerts, walks, and exhibition openings in the woods round up the program, offering informal networking opportunities with the local population and artists from all over the globe.