Qatar Week showcases art, design, Qatar through contemporary lens

Natalie Barr, Contributing Writer

Students and faculty got a glimpse of art, design and research coming out of VCUarts Qatar campus through four events during Qatar Week 2022 on VCU’s campus in Richmond. 

VCUarts Qatar alum Aisha Al-Ziani graduated in 2020 with a fine arts degree in painting and printmaking and spent a semester at VCU’s Richmond campus in 2018. The Qatar campus is more intimate which allows for more opportunity for students, she said. 

“The art produced on the Qatar campus reflects the country, culture and language of the region,” Al-Ziani said. 

Al-Ziani and two other alumni were a part of designing for the FIFA World Cup, which will be hosted in Qatar later this year. Al-Ziani was a singer on the official song for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, titled Hayya Hayya — meaning Better Together, along with two other artists Trinidad Cardona and Davido, she said during a Qatar week panel discussion. The three alumni spoke on a panel during Qatar Week about their involvement in the world cup, she said. 

She attended the final event for the week at the Institute of Contemporary Art, and enjoyed the abstract format of the films, Al-Ziana said.

“That’s how modern art makes you feel,” Al-Ziani said. “It makes you question things and makes you try to dig deeper.” 

She said she hopes students will attend Qatar Week events in the future and VCUarts students who are curious about Qatar and their culture take the opportunity to participate in the school’s semester exchange program. 

“It’s also good to experience something different than what’s familiar to us. It expands our minds. It can even influence our art and shape us as human beings,” Al-Ziani said. “I definitely encourage you to come be a part of it.”

VCUarts Dean Carmenita Higginbotham and VCUarts Qatar Dean Amir Berbić collaborated and launched Qatar Week this year, according to Kelly Kerr, interim executive director of communications for VCUarts. 

The week emphasized the art and design from Qatar’s campus bridging both VCUarts campuses, Kerr said. 

“Rather than Qatar Day, which focused mainly on food, a decision was made to reclaim the event with a meaningful presence on the Richmond campus to raise familiarity with VCUarts Qatar by highlighting their unique stories and perspective,” Kerr said.

Qatar Week featured four events starting with a panel discussion featuring VCUarts Qatar alumni on Sept. 19-21 with a video screening celebrating the week, according to the VCUarts events calendar. 

VCUarts and VCUarts Qatar are both located in areas “rich with arts and culture,” according to Kerr. She said she hopes to continue growing the collaboration between the two campuses and expand relationships and research across the two art campuses. 

“There were many wonderful outcomes, and we also are already thinking about Qatar Week 2023,” Kerr said.

Students can still experience a bit of VCUarts Qatar, even though the week is over, according to Kerr. An exhibition created by 11 faculty, alumni and students from VCUarts Qatar and presented by the 2022 research cohort titled Institute for Creative Research, will be displayed at The Anderson, VCU’s art gallery, until Oct. 28, Kerr said. 

“Those labs explored a broad and really diverse spectrum of territories, cultural production, nanotechnology, textile, sound design, art and law in the Gulf, product design and the emergence of technologies,” Kerr said.

VCUarts Qatar, established in 1998, was the first American campus in Doha’s education city, Kerr said. Over the past 25 years, the campus and city have “really encouraged” relationships across the two campuses. This collaboration gives opportunities for research and alumni opportunities, Kerr said.

“It allows for VCUarts Qatar and VCUarts to truly engage in global conversations to leverage unique voices and creativity and put VCUarts and VCUarts Qatar on a global stage,” Kerr said.

Basma Hamdy, graphic design associate professor and Qatar’s Tasmeem 2022 Conference co-director, said she was excited to showcase a snapshot of the conference during the last day of Qatar Week. The ICA featured four films shown during the Tasmeem Conference, she said.  

“It was a huge conference with a lot of different components,” Hamdy said. “So, we just saw a little tiny slice of it.”

VCUarts Qatar students “have a ton of passion” and a diverse student body consisting of mostly Qatari students, Arab expats — meaning individuals working and living outside of their native country — and international expats, Hamdy said. 

All the students are excited to be at the school and to have chosen design as their major, especially with Qatar’s growing art scene, as new museums and new designs are happening all the time, according to Hamdy.

“There’s a lot of stuff happening in Qatar, and I think our students and our alumni are starting to get more and more employed in those spaces, and they’re starting to reap the benefits of having an art design education,” Hamdy said.

Qatar Week is now going to be an annual event that focuses on showcasing VCUarts Qatar’s talent, rather than a leadership and development program, said Sarah Faheem, the interim director for student life and engagement at VCUarts Qatar. The two campuses are different in their locations, but the design curriculum is “similar,” Faheem said. 

“Rather than one day, a week now sits with a separate department that works very closely with the school of the arts to make a series of events,” Faheem said.

Qatar Day was a big event students remembered and looked forward to each year, Faheem said. She hopes more activities in the future will take place on different areas of VCU’s campus to attract all students, not just VCUarts students, according to Faheem.

“I feel like Qatar Week is going to take some time to be implemented, and, then, it will become bigger and bigger maybe each year,” Faheem said.