G.A.S. Fellowship Award 2025

In December 2024, the G.A.S. Foundation, in partnership with the Yinka Shonibare Foundation, announced the call for the third edition of the G.A.S. Fellowship Award. This year, the award offered two fully-funded six-week residencies at G.A.S. Lagos for outstanding mid-career professionals based in Africa: one for a mid-career visual fine artist and one for a mid-career curator.

The call received over 130 applications from 18 countries across the continent. The selection panel, who carefully reviewed each submission, was impressed by the wealth of talent, as well as the quality and diversity of artistic practices represented. The 2025 Fellows are Shatha Afify, an Egypt-based interdisciplinary artist, storyteller, poet, and thinker, selected as the Visual Arts Fellow, and Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu, a Zimbabwe-based curator and writer, selected as the Curatorial Fellow. During their residencies, Afify will focus on supporting emerging local talent, while Dr. Mushakavanhu will develop and present a curatorial exhibition.

The G.A.S. Fellowship Award 2025 is made possible through the generous support of Deutsche Bank.

Shatha Afify

Egypt | May - June 2025

Shatha Afify (b. 1987, Cairo), also known as Shatha Aldeghady, is an interdisciplinary artist, storyteller, poet, and thinker whose practice weaves together sound, performance, sculpture, and multimedia to explore the terrains of conflict, loss, and resistance. Her work delves into the ethical quandaries of adulthood and awareness, using sound as a storyteller and silence as a space for resilience. Afify is deeply preoccupied with the complexities of existence—choosing positions, taking stands, and the enduring struggle for freedom and dignity, themes she first explored in her early work Dare to Doubt (2015).

Positioning herself as a disruptor of power structures, Afify’s art embodies covert acts of rebellion. She invites audiences to engage with the intricate dance between justice and power, resistance and complicity, as seen in her latest work, Contemplating a Decision (2024), from her series Decision - Forgotten + Remembered (2023–2024). Through her practice, she creates contemporary archives that reflect on her time, offering possibilities for reimagining the present and future. Afify’s art has resonated globally, with exhibitions in Egypt, Europe, and the United States, and residencies at institutions such as the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Her tailored curatorial lens inspires a culture of experimentation, togetherness, and collective action within the art community, as demonstrated in projects like The Act of Touch (2020–2023). Afify’s work is not only a reflection of the world but a call to question, resist, and transform it.

Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu

Zimbabwe | June - July 2025

Tinashe Mushakavanhu is from Harare, Zimbabwe. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Kent. He is a writer and curator whose work deeply engages with archives, literature, and the intersections of African cultural history. His curatorial practice is informed by a keen interest in how archival material and literary narratives shape our understanding of identity, memory, and global politics. Drawing on these interests, he creates exhibitions that explore the complexities of history, authorship, and representation while questioning dominant narratives. He is passionate about creating spaces for collaborative learning exemplified by projects such as Tambira Labs, a co-working space that he co-created in a supermarket in downtown Harare; and Black Chalk & Co. a travelling research design studio that he co-founded to challenge conventional publishing frameworks using experimental methodologies, fostering dialogue and reflection on the evolving narratives that shape contemporary African cultures. He is currently writing an institutional biography of a once popular Pan African book fair.