Dena Springer, Cosmic Intersections, 2025.
Commissioned by Hyundai Artlab, © Dena Springer.
We are looking for two art writers whose forward-thinking insights connect across boundaries, bridging cultural communities in ways both big and small.
The open call is now closed. The Fellows will be announced once all the applicants have been reviewed. We thank everyone who submitted an application.
Within the realm of art, writers act as vital, informed connectors, materializing entangled relationships and articulating the bonds of artistic communities. As our world continues to become more interconnected, vast, and contradictory, a keen eye and voice is all the more valuable in understanding the complex webs of contemporary life.
Established in 2022, Artlab Editorial, an initiative by Hyundai Artlab, has witnessed first hand how platforms for critical art writing are essential to a thriving global art ecosystem. As part of our ambition to spark meaningful dialogue, cultivate empathy, and facilitate collaborations, we’re thrilled to announce the third year of the Artlab Editorial Fellowship.
The application is open now through March 3, 2025, 11:59pm EST. Apply here [object Object] .
Eligibility requirements and FAQs can be found here [object Object] .
We are looking to support two art writers whose forward-thinking insights connect across boundaries, bridging cultural communities in ways both big and small.
This Fellowship is open to art writers from anywhere in the world, and at any stage of their career. The two selected Fellows will be provided $10,000 each to produce three pieces of writing for Artlab Editorial in 2025. Additionally, each Fellow will be paired with one of this year’s Fellowship Advisors for regular one-on-one guidance and mentorship throughout the program.
Fellowship Structure
The Fellowship is designed to produce a vibrant body of new contemporary art writing and connect writers, readers, and artists around the world. With guidance from Artlab’s Editors and Advisors, Fellows will write three pieces of web-based editorial content for publication on Artlab Editorial.
Fellows will be committing to writing one 700-word article in English every other month, for publication on Artlab Editorial from May through December of 2025. They will be expected to develop each article over the course of eight weeks, meeting with their Advisor for in-depth development sessions, and working closely with Artlab Editorial’s Editor via monthly touch-bases.
Fellowship Advisors
To enrich the experience of the Fellows and strengthen Artlab’s community of writers, Fellows will be paired with one of this year’s Fellowship Advisors, Rahel Aima and Orit Gat, to receive regular mentorship, create article outlines, and get guidance on the production of their articles during the course of the program. They will also work closely with Artlab Editorial’s Editor, Shannon Lee, via monthly check-ins for additional guidance and to ensure timely publication.
Rahel Aima is a writer, editor, and critic from Dubai. She is the Editor of BXD: The Postwestern Review. She is currently at work on a book about coastal terroirs, where oil meets water on the Arabian Peninsula, and becoming postwestern, as well as a collection of short exhibition fiction that springs from solar and lunar events. In 2022, Aima wrote "The Artist as Sentinel," a review that juxtaposes Tania Bruguera's Hyundai Commission in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with works by Agnieszka Kurant and Doreen Chan, showcasing how artists employing experimental media critique and celebrate the diverse possibilities of our shared future.
Orit Gat is a British writer and art critic living in London. She has written about contemporary art, books, digital culture, and football for numerous magazines including The White Review, Frieze, e-flux journal and e-flux criticism, ArtReview, Jacobin, Texte zur Kunst, Paper Visual Art, Art Monthly, the Times Literary Supplement, the LA Review of Books, The World Policy Journal, Camera Austria, and Cultured, among others. She won the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant in the short-form writing category in 2015 and was a finalist for the Absolut Art Writing Award (2017) and the International Award for Art Criticism (2017, 2018). In 2022, Gat wrote "How Digital Lineages Change How We Make and Own Artworks," a discussion on how we care for art in the digital age.
Shannon Lee is a writer and editor covering art, culture, the environment, and the Asian diaspora. They are the current Editor of Artlab Editorial in addition to The Amp at Asian American Arts Alliance. Previously, they were an Associate Editor at Artsy and Editor and a Senior Producer at Silica Mag. For their first piece for us, Lee reflected upon Choe U-Ram’s “Little Ark” at MMCA Seoul, questioning how we define progress—both cultural and personal.
Past Artlab Editorial Fellows
In 2024, Artlab Editorial Fellows, Olamiju Fajemisin and Kira Xonorika, explored different ways in which art functions as a bellwether for change. Fajemisin’s suite of essays took the opportunity to interrogate and complicate the terms of Nigerian diasporic identity through diaristic accounts of her own personal research processes and experiences in Lagos and abroad. Meanwhile, Xonorika investigated how diasporic artists like Eddie Wong, Mashinka Hakopian, Behnaz Farahi, and Indigenous artists like Edgar Fabián Frias, Maya Chacaby, and Violeta Ayala are using emerging technologies to reclaim histories and identities.
In the first year of the Artlab Editorial Fellowship, inaugural Fellows, Laurie Rojas and Skye Arundhati Thomas, zeroed in on how their local artistic communities are addressing issues specific to their respective geographic regions. Through their thoughtful, expert observations, we were able to see how these issues resonate beyond their points of origin and into the greater global community.
