zakkiyyah najeebah dumas - o'neal
Helen Scott Lidgett Award
2026/27
zakkiyyah najeebah dumas-o’neal (b. U.S., based in London) is a multidisciplinary artist who works across video montage, sound, performance, and photography, to reorient her relationship to memory, images, history, and poetics. Her work is positioned as poetic gesture and knowledge production, using disparate sources across these mediums, to move “somewhere between archive and continuum”, using her own 35mm and 120mm photographic archive and video footage, alongside historical and contemporary found photo images, field recordings, and appropriated sound. The visual and the sonic compel her to trouble perceptions of Black femme beingness, and it’s right to opacity and complexity.
zakkiyyah has been included in numerous group exhibitions and has had several solo exhibitions which include Arts and Public Life at University of Chicago and Washington University. Her work has been presented in various forms at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, NADA, Centre Pompidou, Rebuild Foundation, The Art Institute of Chicago, BOZAR, The August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago Humanities Festival, DePaul University, EXPO Chicago, and Harvard Graduate School of Design to name a few.
She was a Villa Albertine Laureate Awardee for ChicagolandSeen Commission (2023-24), Artist in Residence with the Camargo Foundation, FR (24'), and more recently a Mona Hatoum Foundation Scholar, UK (25-26'). Her work is represented in both private and public collections, including the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University and Eskenazi Museum of Art.
Helen Scott Lidgett Award
The Helen Scott Lidgett Award is a partnership between Acme, Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London), Art Academy of Latvia and the family of Helen Scott Lidgett. Aiming to provide a bridge between art school and professional practice, the award includes a generous bursary, rent-free studio space and a mentoring programme. Recipients of Acme’s Early Career Awards Programme work from shared studios in order to encourage an environment of peer support and critical dialogue.
