ARCAthens
Gouled Ahmed
Gouled participated as a Visual Art Fellow in the Spring 2025 Athens Residency. Click here to see Gouled’s program. 
 
 Gouled Ahmed is an Addis Ababa-based Somali visual artist, costume designer, and filmmaker. They are the recipient of the African Cultural Fund’s inaugural grant (2019), the Prince Claus Fund’s inaugural Seed Award (2021), the Sharjah Art Foundation’s Production Programme Grant (2022) & the Graham Foundation’s Research Grant (2023).

Gouled’s self-portrait photography work has been exhibited widely at institutions such as the V&A Museum, London (2022), The Brooklyn Museum (2022), the Portland Museum of Art (2023), The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Australia (2024), Lahti Biennial, Finland (2023), & the 15th DAK’Art Biennial, Senegal(2024).

Their collaborative film with poet Asmaa Jama ‘The Season of Burning Things’ has been screened at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale (2021), Oscar qualifying Black Star Film Festival (2022), BAFTA qualifying Aesthetica film festival (2022), the Arab film festival at the Barbican Center, London (2022), and Art Basel Hong Kong (2023). Their latest collaborative film has had solo presentations at Spike Island Gallery, Bristol UK (2023) and The Africa Center, Harlem NY USA (2024). It will be screened at the ICA, London in 2025 through the Bloomberg New Contemporaries program.

Gouled was selected to be part of DAZED MENA’s inaugural 100 list (2024), and was also featured in the documentary ‘The Ones Who Keep Walking’, a film commissioned by Johnnie Walker (2021). They have previously been an artist in residence at Black Rock Senegal (2022) & were most recently selected as a MacDowell fellow (Spring/ Summer 2025).