Forecast

Apply for a chance to work with Almagul Menlibayeva as your mentor!

Artist Almagul Menlibayeva works with video, photography, and cyber-textiles shaped with AI. Her practice reinterprets contemporary processes in Central Asia through mythologies and collective memory, centering women’s autonomy via the epistemic heritage of nomadic feminism, especially in Kazakhstani culture. Her work critically reflects on environmental degradation, modernization, and the politics of visibility in global image systems.

Menlibayeva has exhibited internationally at major biennials including, among others, at Venice, Sydney, South Korea, Thailand, and Ulaanbaatar. She held the solo exhibition Transformation at the Grand Palais, Paris (2016). Recent projects include a major multi-channel video installation on the Kazakh Famine at the 2023 Sharjah Biennale, and participation in the 2025 Digital Biennale Hamburg in collaboration with sound artist German Popov (OMFO). From 2025–2026, she is presenting a retrospective solo exhibition, I Understand Everything, curated by Gridthiya Gaweewong, at the Almaty Museum of Arts (AMA), Kazakhstan. She is a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

As a mentor, Menlibayeva seeks artists who are ready to critically engage with image systems and the politics of memory in the AI era—examining how algorithms, platforms, and global narratives shape the visibility, value, and perceived credibility of images. She is especially interested in artists who approach autonomy not as total control, but as authorship-as-intervention: the capacity to intervene in circulation, framing, and interpretation, while addressing the ethical and ecological consequences of technology.

“This mentorship is a strong fit for artists questioning how images circulate today—how context flattens, memory fractures or multiplies, and trust is reshaped—and who are ready to iterate rigorously through research and practice,” Menlibayeva says.

Artists working in any medium are welcome to apply. Projects that revisit the past as a form of intervention—questioning archives, institutions, platforms, and algorithmic power—are particularly encouraged.

More info: link in bio.

Apply for a chance to work with Lucy McRae as your mentor!

Artist Lucy McRae leads a multidisciplinary art-research studio investigating the impact of technology and science on the planet and the natural world. Alongside her gallery- and museum-focused art practice, she works as a director and maker and moves fluidly between the writer’s room and the lab.

McRae pioneers new narratives about how future technologies may transform human intimacy, reproduction, biology, and health, while foregrounding the ethical implications of genetic engineering. Through speculative, world-building approaches, her work uses hypothesis as a tool to question who we are, how we relate to our bodies, and where we may be headed.

Based in Los Angeles, McRae is a visiting professor at architecture school SCI_Arc, a TED fellow, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. She also works as a world-builder and futurist consultant on Hollywood productions with multiple Oscar-winning directors and producers.

As a mentor, McRae seeks candidates who lead with intuition, kindness, and courage—people willing to be vulnerable, to experiment, and to trust frustration as part of the creative process. Many may be motivated by feeling like outsiders and are collaborative by nature, unafraid of challenge or friction. Projects may emerge from dance, architecture, or hybrid practices that exist between disciplines.

“I’m especially interested in immersive work that engages the body—movement-based practices, music and visual environments, fashion, machines and apparatuses, spatial design, motion capture, sport, and other forms that explore physical intelligence and embodied experience.”

Working with McRae offers an honest exchange shaped by over two decades of navigating an interdisciplinary practice built through invention and uncertainty. “I value curiosity, deep listening, and collaboration across very different backgrounds. Mentorship is not one-directional—I’m equally interested in learning from mentees, and in shaping a shared space where uncertainty is welcomed and exploration is actively supported.”

Application deadline: Monday Feb 16, 11:59pm CET

Find out more through the link in bio.