Events and Activities

Opening of 5th annual Student Art Exhibition

Official opening: Saturday, May 5th 2018

4pm - 6pm 

Under the patronage of Her Excellency Sheikha Al- Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al- Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, 
 
You are cordially invited to the opening of the 5th annual Mathaf Student Art Exhibition.
 
Join us as we celebrate the creativity of aspiring young artists from different schools in Qatar. 

FOCUS: Works from Mathaf Collection

Shakir Hassan Al Said: The Wall

10 September 2017 - 25 September 2018

FOCUS: Works from Mathaf Collection is an ongoing series of solo exhibitions featuring artists from Mathaf Permanent Collection.
 
This exhibition looks at the progression of Shakir Hassan Al Said’s work from the early 1950s to the late 1990s, particularly the disappearance of the figure and landscape and the transition towards a more frontal dimension where texture and physicality replace figurative representations in the works. 
 
Al Said describes the physicality in his painting as exaggerated traces and scratched surfaces of walls and manuscripts. The process of reaching the wall as a texture and looking for an exit (exutoire) when making a hole in it seems to reflect a passage beyond the wall as an obstacle, especially in the years 1990s during his multiples residencies in Doha. The political and spiritual dimension of his work took a stronger meaning after the second war in Iraq following the American invasion. The wall represented on a surface as an artwork, fragmented through the process of burning attempts to open a possible future.  The One-Dimension concept becomes a philosophy and a practice that lead to freedom of space and time together, prefiguring a more spiritual sense of existence.

 

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FOCUS: Works from Mathaf Collection

Mohammed Melehi: 1959-1971

10 September 2017 - 25 September 2018

FOCUS: Works from Mathaf Collection is an ongoing series of solo exhibitions featuring artists from Mathaf Permanent Collection.
 
Mohammed Melehi: 1959-1971 is a study of the life and work of Moroccan artist Mohammed Melehi (b. 1936 Asilah) during the decade of the 1960s. Thirteen works from the Mathaf Collection, from Formation (1959) to Untitled (1970-77), trace Melehi’s curiosity with ideological, scientific, and political systems in modern society. This perspective was shaped by formative periods living in Europe (1955-1962) and the USA (1962-64), before returning to Morocco in 1964, experiences that were grounded in the context of major geopolitical changes and events such as the cold war, the independence of Morocco and Algeria, and the 1967 War.
 

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Art Lessons at Mathaf with Ismael Azzam

Art Lessons at Mathaf with Ismael Azzam will be on hold during Ramadan 2018. It will resume after Eid Al-Fitr Al-Mubarak.

Ramadan Kareem

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Mathaf Collection, Summary, Part 2

10 September 2017 - 10 February 2019

MATHAF: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha

Jassim Zaini, Features from Qatar, 1973, oil on cardboard, 48.5 x 78 cm, Collection of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha

Mathaf houses the largest and most extensive permanent collection of modern and contemporary Arab art in the world featuring over 9,000 works. The collection covers artworks from the 19th century to the present day, reflecting a number of defining moments in Arab history and artistic creation in the region.

This year, Mathaf presents a complete rehang of its Permanent Collection galleries, titled “Summary, Part 2”. This is a display of the museum’s most iconic works, highlighting groundbreaking modern and contemporary artists from the Arab world. 

The new display includes historical artists such as Etel Adnan (Lebanon), Farid Belkahia (Morocco), Saloua Raouda Choucair (Lebanon), Faraj Daham (Qatar), Inji Efflatoun (Egypt), Abdulhalim Radwi (Saudi Arabia), Hassan Sharif (Dubai) and Hussein Zendaroudi (Iran), and a younger generation such as Manal AlDowayan (Saudi Arabia), Wael Shawky (Egypt) and Hayv Kahraman (Iraq-USA). With this Mathaf increases investment in education and audience engagement around the collection that includes making the collection accessible online.

Curated by Mathaf Director Abdellah Karroum and Laura Barlow (Mathaf Curator, Middle East)

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