Qatar Museums opens major exhibition to coincide with 60th Venice Biennale

The exhibition, titled Your Ghosts Are Mine, Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices, on view at ACP–Palazzo Franchetti from April 19 to November 24, presents a journey in moving images through contemporary experiences of community life and memory, transnational crossings and exile

Staff Writer, The Peninsula

April 22, 2024

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Doha, Qatar: Qatar Museums opens a major exhibition to coincide with the 60th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, bringing the visions of dozens of filmmakers and video artists from the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia to the art world’s most prestigious stage.

Your Ghosts Are Mine, Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices is produced by Qatar Museums and co-organised by Doha Film Institute (DFI), Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and the future Art Mill Museum in collaboration with ACP Art Capital Partners and with support from Media City Qatar. The exhibition is curated by Matthieu Orléan with the collaboration of Majid Al Remaihi and Virgile Alexandre.

The exhibition offers an all-encompassing journey through ten galleries, each dedicated to themes such as deserts (cradles of civilisation and places of rebirth), ruins (relics of culture), women’s voices, borders (demarcations between allowed and forbidden places) and exile, as experienced through selected films supported, co-financed or initiated by Doha Film Institute and video works from the collections of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and the future Art Mill Museum.

H E Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums and of Doha Film Institute, said: “Opening at the same time as the Venice Art Biennale and continuing throughout the presentation of the Venice Film Festival, Your Ghosts Are Mine will open the eyes of multitudes of international viewers to the ideas, the feelings, and above all the artistic visions of today’s filmmakers from the Arab world and neighbouring regions. By presenting this exhibition, Qatar Museums advances its key mission of encouraging understanding across borders through cultural exchange, while Doha Film Institute fulfils its mandate to nurture and promote the rising talents of our region.”

Fatma Hassan Alremaihi, Chief Executive Officer of DFI, added: “For nearly 15 years, the Institute has worked to correct the misrepresentation of Arab culture, stories and aesthetics by nurturing important new voices in cinema. We are proud to have supported over 800 diverse projects from 74 countries, underlining Qatar’s commitment to empower a new generation of storytellers and bring balance to the global film landscape. DFI’s creative ecosystem to foster talents from the Arab world and beyond has enabled them to connect with new audiences, and we look forward to visitors discovering the unique perspectives assembled by a team of experts including Qatari filmmakers Majid Al Remaihi and Khalifa Al Thani.”

“As co-organisers of Your Ghosts Are Mine, we are proud to collaborate on this innovative exhibition,” said Zeina Arida, director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and Catherine Grenier, director of concept of the future Art Mill Museum. “The work of our two museums is very much aligned, in its own way, with the ambitious attempt of Your Ghosts Are Mine to reorganise the categories we use to understand the 21st century, whether the lines being crossed are geopolitical borders, the boundaries between fiction and documentary or the outmoded distinction between film and video. We believe that museums have a special role to play in fully integrating cinema at large into the history of art.”

“Cinema is not only the mirror of political changes: it participates in them, anticipates them, accompanies them, supports them, transforms them in a daring aesthetical approach,” said Matthieu Orléan. “These films don’t belong to the mass media and cultural industry. They follow their own paths, never forgetting that they are and will be perceived as pieces of history.”