Alserkal Arts Foundation has named the artist duo Lobna Sana and Ariel Caine as the recipients of a new one-off grant designed to help artists finish ambitious projects. The award, titled Untitled: The Unfinished Project Grant 2026, will support the pair's film Darb Al-Zol, an experimental documentary about the past and continuing erasure of Palestinian Bedouin life in the Naqab region.

The Naqab, the desert region in the south of historic Palestine, is home to Bedouin communities whose villages, grazing lands and ways of life have faced decades of displacement and denial of recognition. Darb Al-Zol turns its attention to that history, using documentary form to record what remains and what has already been lost. The selection committee, which included the artists Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Mona Ayyash, singled out the project for the urgency of its subject and its focus on a history that rarely receives sustained attention.

The grant runs for one year and is aimed at experimental work that challenges established ways of making and showing art. Unlike a production grant for a new idea, a completion grant backs a project that is already under way, giving it the resources to reach the finish line. The cycle will end with a public presentation of the finished film in Dubai, hosted by the foundation, giving the project an audience beyond the festival and gallery circuit.

Since 2019, Alserkal Arts Foundation has supported independent artists, writers, researchers and collectives working across the arts, humanities and social sciences, with a focus on South Asia, West Asia and Africa. The new completion grant extends that work to projects that are already in progress but need backing to be finished and seen.