BRIClab 2026-2027 Video Art Artists

Amani Meliyah is a Brooklyn based interdisciplinary theatre and video artist originally from South Carolina’s Gullah Geechee corridor. Their work is rooted in Black feminist thought and they work across directing, devising, and design to explore the interconnections of liberation, spirit, and intimacy. Their video and projection work is  utilized to anchor live performance. amani directed the film “Absent” (produced by Thomas Booker; Panavision New Filmmaker Grant, Ethos International Film Festival, BronzeLens Film Festival). Recent theatre co-creations with Maleek Rae include “BODYCOUNT” (JACK) and “Ghetto Alchemy: A Lunchroom Survival Guide” (The Tank), for which amani directed, choreographed, and designed projection. They also directed “Hidden Figures Recentered” with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the National Black Theatre. amani is an alum of the Roundabout Directors Group and the current National Black Theatre SOUL LAB Directing Resident and a More Art Engaging Artists Fellow, and a member of the BRIClab Video Art cohort.

David Sainté is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary visual artist and filmmaker of Haitian descent whose work bridges experimental documentary, installation, sculpture, and new media. His practice explores memory, migration, and cultural identity, often searching for ways of finding and creating from within chaotic and unresolved spaces.

Working across physical fabrication, moving image, XR, and generative technologies, Sainté approaches experimentation as a way of finding language within uncertainty. Memory and lived experience become starting points for surreal and mythological worlds, allowing physical and digital forms to move between what is remembered, inherited, and imagined.

Recent projects include Nou Mache lè Solèy Kouche, an installation that combines archival and generative video projection with sculptural masks, supported by the En Foco Media Arts Fund and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. His work has been presented and supported by The Shed and the MUD Foundation, and was an official selection of The Ghetto Biennale in Haiti.

Michael A. Fadugbagbe (faa·du·baag·beɪ) is a Yoruba-Nigerian decolonial imagemaker, film director, writer, and archivist. His interdisciplinary practice across video art, photography, and installation seeks to challenge colonial narratives, addressing themes of displacement, globalization, and migration while questioning how images shape the historical record. 

Fadugbagbe's experimental documentary E BE SO! was jury-nominated for Best Experimental Film at NFFTY, the National Film Festival for Talented Youth, and screened at Maysles Documentary Center for the New York African Film Festival. 

He holds a BA in Studio Art with High Honors from Wesleyan University, where he concentrated in Time-Based Media. He is the founder of The Counter Canon, a Pan-African decolonial film club and discussion series seeking to “decolonize the canon” through the preservation and study of underrepresented and overlooked artists across the African diaspora.

Muyassar Kurdi is a Palestinian-American, New York City-based interdisciplinary artist working across sound art, voice, movement, painting, analog photography, and film. Her practice honors both the futuristic and the ancient through meditative movement and sonic exploration. Centered on embodiment and a nonlinear, improvisational approach, she explores memory, displacement, and the body in relation to nature.

Kurdi has received support from NYFA’s Women’s Fund for Music, American Composers Forum’s Create, Brooklyn Arts Fund, Queens Fund for New Works, NYFA City Artist Corps, the Puffin Foundation, and the Rauschenberg Emergency Grant. She was a finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in Combined Disciplines, commissioned by Roulette Intermedium, and supported by the Jerome Foundation. Her work has been developed through residencies at Harvestworks, The Watermill Center, and Tilal Utique in Tunisia, supported by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation.

Love is Blue, her solo interdisciplinary exhibition, opened in Fall 2023 at La MaMa Gallery in New York City. In 2025, she performed durational works of voice and movement within Otobong Nkanga’s exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her LP, Mountains of Poetry, was released in Fall 2025 with Bilna’es.

Performance highlights include Roulette Intermedium, Abrons Arts Center, Poetry Project, Center for Performance Research, Center for Art Research and Alliances, JACK Theatre, Lincoln Center, the Rubin Museum of Art, Issue Project Room, Chicago Cultural Center, Fridman Gallery, and Movement Research at Judson Church. She has also presented work through exhibitions and film screenings at Queens Museum, Spectacle Theater, Maysles Documentary Center, and Anthology Film Archives.

Sahara Sheikh is a 2D animator, filmmaker, educator, and a graduate of Pratt Institute. She is a Somali-Italian American trans woman from the Philadelphia area, and utilizes animated movement and dance to understand her identities. She believes animation's ability to control a character’s expression and presentation is the perfect vehicle to showcase the trans experience. Her characters are often Black and trans, who wield the power to move their bodies in fantastical and abstract ways. Her film, UPSTAGE (2024), has brought Sahara to Queer | Art's T4TV Screening at the IFC Center, Trans Image Film Festival, Trans Art Fest, and Queer Voices NYC. She also works as an Animation Teaching Artist at The Animation Project Inc. and KoArtStudio. Her goal is to connect with other Black, Queer, and trans creatives, and continue making stories starring fabulous Black and trans women.