Nadia J. Armstrong is an Irish visual artist. She works at the intersection of the analogue and the digital, using performance, writing, photography, 3D avatar design and expanded video. Her work is concerned with the commodification of human emotions, the creation of machines and the physical entanglement of our bodies with world systems. Armstrong has received multiple awards, including a 2020 RDS Visual Arts Award and a 2021 dlr Emerging Artist Grant. She is also one of 13 European artists under 30, who received a 2021 Goethe-Institut A.I. Residency Award, completed at the Centre of Excellence in Media Innovation and Digital Culture (MEDIT) in Tallinn. Nadia has exhibited in Dublin, Carlow, Galway, Tallinn, Paris & London.
Armstrong’s digital #dlrLens_ScribblingScribe project considers technology as a place rather than a thing and materialises the network of technologies that link us to one another. The images are produced through working with an open-source AI that takes texts and interprets them visually. Technology manifesting in physical space, in the form of data centres and digital hubs, was the starting point, which led to the AI taking on the role of a digital scribe or archivist, an automated-digital-illumination generator with which to illustrate the archiving of data. The series depicts AI generated visualisations of what “technology” considered as “place” might look like. Real and virtual spaces come together to create new realms for us to engage with - each version of the AI imagery building upon the next, showing infinite possibilities for what a future living in harmony with technology might look like and for how we, with the help of machines, can co-create sustainable, unbiased systems.
Amna Walayat is a Cork-based Pakistani-born emerging mixed media visual artist. Her current practice is based on traditional and neo-Indo-Persian Miniature painting, expressing her hybrid cultural experiences and her position as migrant artist. Her recent shows include a yearlong exhibition The Narrow Gate of Here and Now at IMMA, 191 RHA, Dublin Arts and Human Rights Festival in Chester Beatty and Mill Theatre and a two-person show at LHQ.
She is interested in promotion of South Asian Art and Culture in Ireland/ Europe. She has independently established Pakistan Ireland Arts Exchange and worked with Cultural Action Europe as MENA Cultural Agent for advising policies. Currently she is working on her South Asian community-based project as Creative Producer in Residence with Cork County Council, Ireland. She has curated the e-exhibition of "Pakistani Artists Community in Ireland" in collaboration with Embassy of Pakistan Dublin 2020; and 1st Indo-Persian Miniature exhibition with Cork County Council in Mallow, 2021.
Amna has an MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History Theory and Criticism from UCC, and an MA in Fine Arts from Punjab University, Lahore. She has worked with National Art Gallery and Alhamra Arts Council as Programme Organiser and Curator in Pakistan.
She is a member of Art Nomads, BAN, Sample-Studios, Angelica Network, Smashing Times and VAI, and a recent recipient of Arts Council Ireland’s Next Generation Award, Agility Award; and Project Art Centre’s “Project Intensive”. Currently, she is working on Pluck Project and 40th EVA International Platform Commission.
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The 2022 programme and themes are organised by dlr LexIcon’s Gallery Learning Programme Co-ordinator, Moran Been-noon. Moran is a Dublin-based independent curator and visual artist. As a curator she is primarily interested in multi-platform group exhibitions. Her current focus is on feminist artwork created on the spectrum between contemporary art practice, and traditionally-feminine creative crafts. Moran is also a co-founder of angelica.network, an Ireland-wide network which amplifies the voices of artists based on the island of Ireland who self-identify as women or minority genders, from underrepresented cultural or ethnic backgrounds. More details at MoranB.art.