The recipient of the 2024 Scult Family Artist Award is Safwat Saleem. Saleem is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice ranges from graphic design and illustration to writing, film, and sound. His body of work centers on immigrant narratives and the cultural loss through assimilation, weaving together themes of preservation, the longing to belong, resistance, and the quiet joy of parenthood. Humor, especially satire, plays a key role in his work, helping him make sense of the tensions within identity and belonging.

In Saleem’s first solo exhibition at Phoenix Art Museum, Safwat Saleem: The unrequited love institute (T.U.L.I.) brings together works from across Saleem’s career in a single site-specific, immersive satirical installation. Informed by the historical practice of conceptual art, T.U.L.I. invites visitors to engage with objects and systems that shape immigrant belonging, such as a number kiosk, orientation video, and immigrant clock, which are seen as tools designed to ensure that “every individual is recalibrated for seamless integration” through “behavioral correction, narrative alignment, and identity optimization” methods.

Saleem has been named a TED Fellow, a Define American Fellow, and an AAPI Creative Catalyst Fellow. He believes in using art for social impact and has collaborated with change-making organizations including Represent Us Now (RUN) AAPI, South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), 18 Million Rising, and Fine Acts. He is the founder of the former online Pakistani music magazine Bandbaja, which advocated for using popular music as a tool for activism and change.