Artists we’re working with
BUZZCUT emerging artist award 2022
The Emerging Artist Award is a year-long development opportunity for two Scotland-based artists, to support them to develop a new performance for a professional context. Get to know our 2022 artists below and look out for opportunities to engage with their work at our upcoming events.
The Emerging Artist award is funded by Creative Scotland in partnership with Take Me Somewhere & Centre for Contemporary Arts.
huss
HUSS is an Arab performance + Visual artist based in Glasgow. Tackling personal and cultural themes, his discipline involves experimenting and combining elements such as installation, sculpture, visuals and audio to culminate in immersive performance/visual pieces.
Huss uses his work as a Queer person of colour to raise issues facing the Arab world that lack acknowledgment in western society, especially queer laws and how much it has always censored and endangered artists like himself. He is always striving to produce work that both immerses and captivates audiences in unexpected ways to tackle important issues that need spoken about more. It is important for Huss to open his work up for collaboration, creating a space where Queer Arabs can mourn, rant and create freely and safely. Huss' work is dedicated to the vulnerable, the censored and the silenced.
The work produced for this award will be a thank you to Glasgow for supporting him at his most vulnerable and most importantly, a story of Arab Queerness.
sukhdev parhar
Sukhy Parhar (she/they) is a Glasgow-based queer, mixed-race, neurodivergent multidisciplinary artist and producer. They are currently navigating their way through sobriety and recovery from substance misuse, which has opened a whole new lens of discourse, giving rise to the Towards Sobriety and Reborn projects.
Continuing the strand of Butoh dance that emerged during her performances X (2019) and Weathervanes (2021), the 2022 Buzzcut award will support her in the development of a new dance piece to celebrate her sobriety, and chart the transition from substance abuse, through unfolding and reshaping the knotted sequences of her mind.
Club performance residencies 2022/23
The Club performance residencies are opportunities for Scotland based artists to develop innovative new performance works for Glasgow’s club nights. Each artist is supported to perform at 4 gigs over a 2 month period.
The club performances residencies are funded by SHED in partnership with clubnights Shoot Your Shot, HEALTHY & Bonjour. They will run from October 2022 - March 2023. Check back here for specific dates when you can catch their work!
shawn nayar
Shawn Nayar (he/they) is an interdisciplinary artist who weaves physical, digital, and performative mediums into collaborative erotic enquiries. His work investigates the fetishization and sexualisation of the body through interactive performances that invite the audience to leave their mark on his “body of work”. The visual culture of Nayar’s Indian heritage is central to his work, which he entwines with notions of the abject that are intimately linked to his queerness. The duality of these influences imbues his performances with enticing contradictions and erotic critiques rooted in racial and queer discourses. His academic research within these fields lends him a performative persona which shapes collaborations with other artists and interactions with his audience.
Throughout this residency, Nayar aims to develop his performative persona in close collaboration with other artists based in Glasgow. He is also excited to bring his interactive performances to Glasgow club nights and invite the audience to engage with the racial and queer discourses that ground his practice.
nikhita devi
Nikhita Devi (they/them) is a multidisciplinary performer and movement artist who draws inspiration from many sources, including music, dance, martial arts and various spiritual traditions. They aim to inspire, educate and entertain while honouring their cultural roots and heritage, creating an atmosphere of warmth and comfort even when exploring the unknown and pushing boundaries with their art and creative expression. Their main form of expression is movement inspired by Indian classical dances, bellydance and burlesque.
With this residency I want to push boundaries and try to show people something new, deep, meaningful and exciting; I want to draw on my multi-disciplinary background as well as my culture, my heritage and my identity as a queer immigrant of colour, performer, artist and teacher.