Panel 1: Beauty opposes Conflict

Culture and Conflict are inextricably linked. Culture is implicated both in the substance of conflicts and in the way people and communities deal with conflicts. The Prince Claus Fund works in difficult situations where normal structures are absent or destroyed: conflict and post-conflict situations where cultural expressions are difficult, repressed or even dangerous. The Prince Claus Fund supports, recognizes and honors men and women whose courageous and creative cultural practices in conflict and post-conflict situations assist communities in finding resolution, reconciliation and in reconstructing their lives.

Panel 2: Beauty breaks Silence

The Prince Claus Fund supports innovative and courageous cultural actors whose work makes a significant contribution to opening up spaces of freedom and fostering development in places where people and ideas have been silenced or repressed. People who are a role-model and inspiration for others and for change.

Panel 3: Beauty in Context

Beauty in Context highlights the rich diversity of human creativity and aesthetics. Beauty and the creation of beauty imbue a community with a sense of achievement, pride, identity, purpose and hope. The Prince Claus Fund honors cultural actors whose work successfully stimulates and enhances the role of beauty in providing inspiration and empowering personal and communal development.

Ghida Fakhry

Ghida Fakhry Khane, News and Programmes Presenter, Al Jazeera English

Ghida is a senior news anchor for Al Jazeera English and currently presents the channel’s Newshour programmes. She moved last year to the network’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar, from Washington DC where she had been Lead Female Anchor since the channel’s launch in 2006. As host of “Witness", AJE's flagship documentary programme, she has also presented award-winning documentaries from around the world.

Ghida’s career spans over fifteen years in political journalism, both in print and on television. She has reported extensively from the United Nations in New York, where she conducted numerous in-depth interviews with Heads of State and Government, Ministers of Foreign Affairs and other international policy-makers as well as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.  She co-anchored AJE’s marathon 12-hour live coverage of the last US presidential elections from Washington DC.

In 2000 she was New York Bureau Chief of Al Jazeera Arabic, and covered on location the attacks of 9/11 in Manhattan and their aftermath.  She has subsequently reported live on location from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ghida Fakhry Khane holds a Master of Arts in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and a Master of Arts in International Relations from Boston University. She is fluent in English, Arabic and French and speaks conversational Spanish. She is married and has one daughter.

Ntone Edjabe

Ntone Edjabe (1970) was born in Cameroon and moved to Nigeria to complete his studies. In 1993 he moved to South Africa, where he has worked on different projects. He co-founded the Pan African Market in 1999, a trade and cultural centre in Cape Town. He worked as a freelance editor from 1998 to 2002. In 2001 he initiated the Kalakuta Trust, a non-profit organisation. In 2009 he was Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abramowitz Artist-in-Residence. He is a board-member of Keleketla Library, an arts organisation.

Ntone Edjabe is founder and Editor-in-Chief of Chimurenga, a publication of culture and politics. He co-edits the African Cities Reader, a biennial publication in collaboration with the University of Cape Town. He is founder and co-curator of the Pan African Space Station, an internet based music project. As speaker on contemporary African art and culture, he has participated in events around the world. Chimurenga will be presented with the Principal Prince Claus Award on 14 December 2011 at the Royal Palace in Amsterdam.

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is a multi-award winning documentary filmmaker, investigative journalist, activist and educationist. Sharmeen has worked on 14 films for major networks across the globe. In 2010, Sharmeen became the first Pakistani woman to win an Emmy award for her work in Pakistan's Taliban Generation. She won the prestigious Livingston Award for Young Journalists as well.

Sharmeen co-founded The Citizens Archive of Pakistan (2007), an organization formed to foster and promote community-wide interest in the culture and history of Pakistan. The organization works with thousands of underprivileged children to establish critical thinking skills and instilling a sense of pride in them about their history and identity.

Sharmeen is currently working on a non violence campaign in Pakistan and is editing a documentary about transgenders in Pakistan. Her latest documentary, ‘Saving Face’ has been short listed for an Oscar nomination in 2012 in the category, ‘Best Documentary: Short Subject’.

Odile Gakire Katese

Former deputy director of the University Centre for Arts and Drama of the National University of Rwanda (2003 – 2010), Odile Gakire Katese is committed to galvanize healing after the 1994 national genocide by creating opportunities for expression, reconciliation and hope via different forms of arts.

As a theatre director, playwright and actress creating artistic works of the highest quality, her impressive body of theatre pieces include: Des Éspoirs (Wishes For Hope), a dance/theatre work about rebuilding after trauma; the founding of Amizero Kompagie, Rwanda’s first professional contemporary dance company; the founding of Ingoma Nshya (Women's Initiative), the country’s first women’s drumming group breaking the taboo of drums being played exclusively by men for kings and princes; and Ngwino Ubeho (Come and Be Alive), a dance/theater piece inviting a return to life through reconciliation with the dead. Odile also created different festivals: Festival Arts Azimuts (FAAZ), the first international performing arts festival in Rwanda and Rwanda Drum Festival, the first national festival in Rwanda.

As the founding director of Rwanda Professional Dreamers, she is working on Mumataha, a 3 years project related to the 20th commemoration of the genocide and The Book of Life, a project planning to collect and publish in a library – memorial site, 1,000,000 letters written to the victims of the genocide. Odile is a Sundance Theatre Lab Alumni, a fellow of Salzburg Global Seminar  and the inaugural recipient of the League of Professional Theatre Women‘s Rosamond Gilder/Martha Coigney International Award.  

Regina Galindo

Regina Galindo (1974) was born in Guatemala City. She is a radical and compelling performance artist who confronts violence, oppression and injustice. Regina uses her body as a metaphor for the collective social body, and subjects it to acts that resonate and reflect specific local and international instances of human rights abuse, violent crime, economic injustice and political chicanery.

Her work has been the subject of solo shows and group shows as well at several festivals, galleries and museums across the world. She has been invited to participate in several Biennales for example  Sydney, Havana, Moscou,  Valencia, Milano and Venice. She won the Golden Lion Award for young artists in the 51 Venice Biennal in 2005; a residence in ArtPace San Antonio Texas; and a grant of the Program exhibition entitled 10 Defining Experiments by cifo 2006. Regina is one of the 2011 Prince Claus Laureates.

Salma Samar Damluji

Salma is a graduate of the Architectural Association School of Architecture, London (1977) and the Royal College of Art, London (1987). After that she worked with Egyptian Architect Hasan Fathy in Cairo between 1974 and 1975, and from1983 to1984. She did a research Fellow at the Royal College of Art in London (1987-1989) and was tutor in the Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts (VITA) from 1989 to1994. She also was co-ordinator of the RCA Morocco-Asilah Studios (1994-1996) and from 1989 to1997 she was senior Tutor at The Architectural Association School of Architecture, in the Housing & Urbanism department, Graduate School. She was also curator of a number of exhibitions in London.

More recently she was responsible for key architectural and building projects and for inviting international architects and artists to work there in different parts of the world, for instance in Abu Dhabi. Also she worked on several emergency rescue project sites, for example  at Masna‘t Daw‘an, Sah & ‘Aynat in Hadramut, Yemen. 

Rena Effendi

Rena Effendi’s early documentary work focused on the oil industry’s effects on people’s live in her own country. As a result, she followed the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey, collecting stories along the way. This work of six years was published in 2009 in her first book: Pipe Dreams: A Chronicle of Lives along the Pipeline.

Effendi’s international awards include the “Fifty Crows” Documentary Photography award and the Getty Images Editorial grant. She participated in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in 2005 and 2007, she was chosen by the PDN magazine as one of 30 emerging photographers to watch. In 2008 Rena Effendi won the National Geographic “All Roads” photography award. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, including at the “Visa Pour l’Image’’ Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, the 52nd Venice Biennale and the Istanbul Biennial. Rena Effendi is represented by INSTITUTE for Artist Management worldwide and Agency Photographer.RU in Russia. Effendi is one of the 2011 Prince Claus Laureates.

Rahul Mehrotra

Rahul Mehrotra studied at Ahmedabad’s School of Architecture and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Recent architectural projects include a campus for a street-children’s NGO, restoration of Chowmahalla Palace and a conservation master plan for the Taj Mahal. Mehrotra founded the Bombay Collaborative, has been advisor to Bombay’s Municipal Commissioner, on the Board of Governors of Bombay’s Heritage Society, consultant to citizens’ groups, the Bombay Environmental Action Group and numerous international organisations, and on the jury of the Aga Khan Awards, Berkley Prize, James Stirling Prize and Urban Age Awards. A trustee and former executive director of the Urban Design Research Institute, Mehrotra’s publications include Bombay - The Cities Within and Bombay to Mumbai - Changing Perspectives. He is a Professor and Chair of the Urban Planning and Design Department at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

Fatoumata Diawara

Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara has packed a lot of experience into her 29 years. Born of Malian parents, Fatoumata achieved local fame in Abidjan as a dancer before moving to Bamako in her early teens and starting an acting career. Amongst other work, she starred in Cheikh Oumar Sissoko's film La Genese. Moving to Paris in her early twenties she spent six years touring internationally with the theatre troupe Royal de Luxe, going on to star in the musical Kirikou et Karaba, while recording and touring with Oumou Sangare. All of which has fuelled her passion to develop her own music, composing, arranging and playing her own material, blending Wassalou traditions and wider influences into a spacious acoustic environment where the warm tones of her voice can glissade and glide.