The two artists will create new, boundary-pushing artworks that enhance the appreciation of sports culture and the Olympic Games, and will be included in the Cultural Olympiad at the LA28 Summer Games.
Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark, selected for the QOSM by the international jury, has been granted a two-month residency with studio space at Doha Fire Station. Alioune Thiam will similarly take part in a two-month programme at the Olympic Museum, with studio space at La Becque Artist Residence. Both artists will receive mentorship opportunities from members of the international jury, and will have a unique opportunity to explore the museums’ collections, archives and storylines relating to sports culture and the Olympic Games.
“These residencies bring together the creative power of digital art with the Olympic Games’ historic and cultural significance,” said QOSM Director Abdulla Yousuf Al Mulla. “We are proud to be part of this initiative and to work closely with the Olympic Museum in Lausanne to offer this rare and important opportunity to emerging artists. We invite artists to be part of future open calls for this remarkable programme, which will be offered annually until the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.”
The residency, which marks the first year of a partnership between the QOSM and the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, will run from 1 October to 1 December 2025. The artists’ work will be exhibited at the LA28 Games as part of the Cultural Olympiad and then enter the respective museums’ permanent collection.
“Since its creation, the Olympic Museum has striven to preserve and share the rich legacy of the Olympic Movement while embracing innovation to keep that heritage alive and relevant,” said Yasmin Meichtry, Olympic Museum Associate Director and jury chair. “The Olympic Heritage | Artists-in-Residence Programme embodies this spirit perfectly by honouring the past through the lens of young contemporary artists working with digital media. We warmly congratulate Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark and Alioune Thiam, our inaugural residents, and look forward to seeing how their creativity and innovative use of digital tools will open new artistic pathways to express and transmit the Olympic values to today’s audiences.”
D’Clark is a 29-year-old London-based digital sculptor, who explores ethnicity, representation and digital hybridity in contemporary art. Her work blends digital with sculptural methods, focusing on nuanced representations of black anatomy. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree (Europe – Art and Culture 2024), her recent work includes a major public commission for the Equal Justice Initiative, Montgomery, Alabama.
Thiam is a 32-year-old Senegalese video artist, who specialises in projection mapping and interactive installations. His work explores the impact of digital technology on Senegalese and African culture through immersive audiovisual creations. In 2022, he became the first Senegalese artist in residence at the Dominicans of Haute Alsace Cultural Centre in France, with his project “ARTIST 2.0 The Creative Scope of Digital Technology”.
D’Clark and Thiam were selected by an international jury from a pool of applicants representing 20 nations across six continents. Jury members included Nita Ambani, International Olympic Committee member and founder and Chair of the Reliance Foundation; Khalifa Al Obaidly, photographer and Director of Fire Station’s Artists in Residence Programme; Rachel Falconer, digital art curator and Head of Digital Arts Computing Goldsmiths University London; Jonathan Kearney, digital artist, researcher and lecturer at Central Saint Martins London; and Britt Salvesen, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints and Drawings Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It was chaired by Yasmin Meichtry.
The call was open to artists between the ages of 18 and 34 who work with any form of digital media, including AI, data-driven art, and augmented and virtual reality, any of which may also be combined with physical media.