Mai Alneng

Disciplin: Visuell kommunikation

Stipendieår: 2026

Nominerande institution: Konstfack

Nomineringskommitté: Catherine Anyango Grünewald, LektorMoa Matthis, LektorAnna Olsson, AdjunktJens Schildt, AdjunktJöns Mellgren, Adjunkt

Stipendiestiftelse: Jubelfonden

I am pleased to nominate Mai Alneng for the Jubelfonden stipend. Mai is an exceptional student. Her work is sensitive, conceptual, clear and also demonstrates a deeply felt engagement with urgent social and political questions. Mai’s exam project 'Här för att stanna' is an exploration of migration, belonging, and identity, informed by her own experience of living between Swedish and Vietnamese cultural contexts. Her current project develops from a personal and formative event, in which her family’s Vietnamese restaurant was visited by police and the process of that police visit revealed stark disparities in how “Swedishness” and Swedes and non Swedes is perceived and acted upon. From this starting point, Mai has developed a project that interrogates systems but keeps the human experience at its core. Her process is unusally outward-reaching, as well as personal and introspective. Mai has conducted interviews with individuals directly affected by migration policies, including recently deported persons and members of her own community. These conversations require a high degree of trust and empathy; in one instance, an interviewee was moved to tears while retelling experiences that had long been suppressed. Mai handles such moments with care and integrity, which is crucial while working with vulnerable narratives. What distinguishes Mai’s work is her ability to translate these lived experiences into a compelling and original visual language. Her project takes the form of an immersive, scenographic installation in which animated film is projected onto large-scale representations of official documents from the Swedish Migration Agency. Through this, she draws attention to the the bureaucratic association of paper, such as permits, records, and its role in human value and belonging. She draws on Vietnamese visual culture, including mid-20th-century film posters and Nhạc Vàng songbook covers, and the risograph, connecting culture, history and the present. Within the teacher team we have observed that Mai has a consistently original and relevant approach. A tutor writes: One thing about Mai’s project: interviewing many people and being able to frame and mediate that through an aesthetic that is profoundly rooted in personal and family history – is a a unique expression of collective experience. That is quite something. Reaching out, and inwards, and back in time/space, at once. It has also been noted that her project is rooted in the need to communicate with others, which we value very much. Mai seeks feedback, responds well to guidance, is committed to development and experimentation (for example woking with the Riso). To finish, one thing that I have noticed over the three years is Mai’s neverending support of her peers – in feedback sessions, critiques, digital spaces, everywhere. She really just goes above and beyond as a student and as a peer.