ARTIST's Network
Mohamed Sleiman Labat
Short bio and cv
Visual Artist / Filmmaker / Writer
Mohamed Sleiman Labat is a Sahrawi multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and writer. Born and raised in the Sahrawi refugee camps in southwest Algeria, he now runs Motif Art Studio; a small art space built entirely from discarded materials following destructive floods that hit the refugee camps in 2015. His art draws upon the past & present life of the Sahrawi people through different art practices including films, writing & community-based art.
Following a three-year artistic research project of PHOSfate in Finland, which dealt with phosphate and its impact on two different environments; the Baltic Sea and Western Sahara, he is now devoting more time and effort to research and practice local food growth, different social and ecological practices in his community in the Hamada Desert.
The Sandoponic garden model is a newly developed solution in the Sahrawi community, his film DESERT PHOSfate weaves through narratives of human and mineral displacement, sand particles, plants and community resilience. The film and the Sandoponic garden have been exhibited in different venues including the Helsinki Biennial 2023 in Finland, CultureScapes 2023 in Switzerland, Luleå Biennial 2024, Sweden, the Museum of Contemporary Arts Plaza Cinema in Long Island, USA, and at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Dundee, Scotland in 2025.
Mohamed Sleiman Labat has exhibited internationally and is the recipient of multiple awards, grants and residencies.
AWARDs, GRANTS & RESIDENCIES
2005 John. M. Anderson Lecture Series Award, PennState Universiy, PA, USA
2024 S+T+ARTS Prize Africa (EU Award of Distinction) Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria
2024 Prince Claus Fund Mentorship Award (Cultural & Artistic Responses to the Environmental Crisis)
2023 Atelier Mondial –International Arts Exchange Program, Basel, Switzerland
2020 Oskar Öflund Stiftelse (PhosFATE Research Group)
2020 Perpetuum Mobile Artist in Residence (PM) Turku & Helsinki, Finland
2020 Saastamoinen Foundation Artist in Residence, Turku & Helsinki, Finland
2020 Saari Residence by Kone Foundation, Perpetuum Mobile (PM) Finland
2019 PhosFATE Artistic Research grant with Pekka Niskanen, funded by Kone Foundation, Finland
2019 BioArt Society Residency with Godzilla Floating Research Platform, Helsinki, Finland
2019 Lauttasaari Manor Residence, Kone Foundation, Helsinki, Finland
2018 Lush Spring Prize, with Jewellers of the Desert, London, UK.
2017 Afkar Fellowship, Wassabi, New Silk Road, Swedish Institute, What Took You So Long, Tunisia.
Artists Network is a directory for all the individual artists, filmmakers, curators, scientists, academics, researchers, writers, poets and cultural practitioners with whom we have worked or collaborated in any capacity. This pages serves as a guide but also a way to credit and value those who have worked with us and helped enriched our art projects and collaborations.