Qatar Aims to Increase its Influence in the Realms of Art and Film

The future of art is very much the theme of “Your Ghosts Are Mine: Expanded Cinema, Amplified Voices,” a film and video installation that coincides with this year’s Venice Biennale. Organized by Qatar Museums and featuring some 40 artists from the region, it speaks to the emergence of the Middle East as a force in various art forms, not to mention a force in changing the narrative on how the region is portrayed in film and art.

The future is on the mind of Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the chairwoman of Qatar Museums and the Doha Film Institute. Al Mayassa sees this year’s Art for Tomorrow conference in Venice, convened by the Democracy & Culture Foundation, with panels moderated by New York Times journalists, as a chance to improve the profile of artists from her home country of Qatar and beyond. Among the events at the conference is a tour of the installation at the ACP Palazzo Franchetti, a Biennale venue.

“In Qatar, we’ve been working for years to support the work of filmmakers and video artists from the Arab world and others from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia,” Al Mayassa said in a recent interview. “This exhibition continues our work of bringing their ideas from the margins of the international conversation to the center.”

The installation, which runs through Nov. 24, also plays into the Biennale’s theme of “Foreigners Everywhere” with excerpts from movies and videos in 10 galleries in the palazzo from more than 40 artists from around the world. Each gallery has a theme, ranging from deserts as cradles of civilization and places of rebirth to borders as the lines between both free and forbidden places.