New exhibition focuses on importance of storytelling
It’s a big month over at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, with four new exhibitions opening in September.
We won’t be playing favourites, but we’re certainly excited for Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria’s first major museum exhibition in the Middle East.
Planning on paying a visit? Here’s everything you need to know before you go.
What is INVISIBLE LABORS daydream therapy about?
Featuring both existing and new works, INVISIBLE LABORS daydream therapy stresses the importance of storytelling and speculative narratives as strategies of survival, imagination and reclaiming histories, with a particular focus on the Gulf’s relation to the surrounding regions.
Step inside, and you’ll find installations, video-work, commissioned soundscapes, workshops, conversations, drawings and online screening and meetings.
Al-Maria said, “In 2007, I interviewed my uncle who at the time had just gotten a job as a security guard at Hamad Hospital about his dreams. In preparation for this show I found this relic and it moved me tremendously.
“This sweet moment of possibility and the bittersweet contents of it made me reflect on how none of his dreams had come true in the close to 20 years since. At a time when the ‘collective vision’ of what our future will look like is in the hands of very few, it is more important than ever to listen directly to the many dreamers.”
Al-Maria’s work often focuses on imagining revisionist histories and alternative futures, and along with her collaborator Fatima Al Qadiri, Al-Maria coined the term “Gulf Futurism” to describe the growing atomisation of individuals and the shifting ground of urban planning, aesthetics, and media, and their impact on everyday life in the post-oil Persian Gulf.
One of the most famous Qatari artists, Al-Maria is also a writer and filmmaker, and currently lives in London.
In 2018, she was Whitechapel Gallery’s Writer in Residence 2018, and she presented her work Beast Type Song at Tate Britain the following year.
Last year, she had solo exhibitions at Garage MCA, Moscow, and presented taraxos, her first public sculpture, at Serpentine Gallery in London.
INVISIBLE LABORS daydream therapy was curated by Amal Alhaag in collaboration with Mathaf’s assistant-curator Abdulrahman Mohammed Alkubaisi.
Alhaag said, “With INVISIBLE LABORS daydream therapy, Sophia offers visitors, collaborators, and participants a poetic, intimate, and visually enriching journey—interwoven with pressing societal questions, such as (inter)generational labor issues, migratory dreams, and interpersonal histories.
“The exhibition functions as a caretaker of dreams and daydreamers. After all, when we ask how dreams can be a catalyst for rekindling radical forms of solidarity across differences, we must go beyond clichés of solidarity and decentralise our privileges and (dis)comfort.”
From the Time Out Doha website.
