Alumnus Asif Mian '18 Awarded Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant

By
Mădălina Telea Borteș
November 16, 2022

Visual Arts alumnus Asif Mian ’18 has been awarded an Emerging Artist Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation. Established in 1997 to honor the memory of Rema Hort Mann, an art enthusiast and a founding member of the New Museum of Contemporary Art’s Young Collectors Group, the Grant offers $10,000 of financial support and signals the promise of enduring artistic success. 

“I was very surprised when I got the call,” Mian told us. “For me, I think this award is really reaffirming, it tells me to keep going in the direction that I’m going.” 

For Mian, that direction includes an oeuvre of multi-disciplinary works that engage the body directly and metaphorically. Through poignant performance, video installations, and sculpture, Mian creates portals for expanded ways of seeing the body as place, act, and subject. Currently, Mian is presenting two works—Smokeless Fire (2022) and Nothingness and Specter (2022)—at the Okayama Art Summit

This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Emerging Artist Grant. Among the Foundation’s prior grantees are three Columbia School of the Arts affiliates: Visual Arts Professor Sarah Sze, whose large-scale paintings and sculptural installations present alternate topographies of today’s technological milieu; alumnus David Altmejd ’02, whose sculptures employ archetypal symbolism to evoke the push and pull of abjection, and alumna Dana Schultz ’02, whose color-forward paintings magnify the temporal aspects of feelings, such as lust, confusion, and rage. 

Asif Mian (b. Jersey City, NJ), earned an MFA from Columbia University (2018) and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2018). Mian also holds a B.A. in Studio Art & B.S. in Biology (Genetics) from Drew University. Mian’s interdisciplinary works engage memory, ritual, and modes of violence. Recent exhibitions include Queens International: Volumes at The Queens Museum; “Always, Already, Haunting, "disss-co," Haunt ” curated by Whitney ISP fellows at The Kitchen; the inaugural Open Call exhibition at The Shed; and Beyond Geographies: Contemporary Art and Muslim Experience at BRIC, Brooklyn. Awarded the 2021 Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artist, Mian’s multichapter project, RAF, was the focus of a solo exhibit at the Queens Museum.