Until 9 August 2025, the Arab Museum of Modern Art (Mathaf) is hosting Your Ghosts Are Mine: Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices, a major group exhibition produced by Qatar Museums and co-organised by Mathaf, the future Art Mill Museum, and Doha Film Institute. Originating at ACP–Palazzo Franchetti in Venice in 2024 as part of the 60th Venice Biennale, the exhibition features 40+ filmmakers and artists from the Arab world, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
The show explores the possibilities of expanded cinema, from multi-channel video works and performance-based pieces to archival interventions and immersive soundscapes. The featured artists reflect a wide range of geographies, yet their works converge in their responses to displacement, occupation, exile, and erasure. In Your Ghosts Are Mine, the ghosts in question are not only personal or ancestral; they are collective shadows that haunt images, sounds, and silences, waiting to be reclaimed and re-voiced.
The exhibition unfolds across seven galleries divided into several thematic sections: Deserts — as places of cultural origin and renewal; Ruins — archaeological memory and heritage; Fires — symbols of resistance and transformation; Borders — zones of inclusion and exclusion; and Exile — migration, displacement, and transnational crossings. It also includes dedicated sections for women’s voices (Deliverance) and cosmic reflections (Cosmos).
Featured artists include Jessica Beshir (Ethiopia), Ali Cherri (Lebanon), Shaima Al Tamimi (Yemen), Saudade Kaadan (Syria), Shirin Neshat (Iran), Larissa Sansour (Palestine), Tariq Teguia (Algeria), Abderrahmane Sissako (Mauritania), and many others. Also represented are key figures such as British-born Egyptian artist Hassan Khan, Afghan-American artist Lida Abdul, Egyptian artist Wael Shawky, and Qatari-American artist and writer Sophia Al-Maria.
Hassan Khan contributes Jewel (2010), a 6-minute film that opens with flashing lights gradually transforming into the form of an anglerfish, set to a sha‘abi music track composed by the artist. The film features two men dancing: a scene Khan reimagined from a moment he witnessed on a Cairo street, blending the mundane with the mystical.
Lida Abdul‘s practice often focuses on the intersection of body and place. She presents Dome (2005), a 4-minute video loop that documents her chance encounter with a solitary young boy wandering a devastated landscape. Through this piece, the artist evokes themes of exile, ruin, and resistance with quiet intensity.
In his work, Wael Shawky explores notions of national, religious, and artistic identity. His Cabaret Crusade, a trilogy of puppets and marionettes, recreates the medieval clashes between Muslims and Christians. Meanwhile, in Al Araba Al Madfuna (2012–2016), his trilogy of surreal films, children play adult roles to reenact poetic fables. Drawing inspiration from his visit to a village beside an ancient pharaonic site, Shawky blurs the lines between historical fiction and collective memory.
Sophia Al-Maria, a pioneer of the concept of Gulf Futurism (co-developed with Fatima Al Qadiri), uses film and writing to interrogate techno-capitalist futures and uneven modernities. Her recent literary work, titled Sad Sack, Al-Maria explores how the Gulf, often imagined as futuristic by outsiders, is in some ways already living out those speculative realities, particularly concerning feminism, power, and cultural perception.
To get more information about Your Ghosts Are Mine: Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices, please go to the official web page of the exhibition.
In addition, you might be interested in viewing General Behaviour by Emirati artist Farah Al Qasimi, one of the virtual exhibitions at the Cultural Foundation.
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