From Flour to Art. Artists' Commissions in the Art Mill Museum 2030 exhibition
How can the memory of an industrial site and its activities be preserved through art? A flour mill built on the Doha Corniche in 1996 will be transformed into a museum of international modern and contemporary art, to open in 2030. Artists based in France, Pakistan, Qatar and Turkey have been commissioned by the Art Mill Museum prefiguration team to create new artworks. Their films, photographs and a mosaic are on view in the Art Mill Museum 2030 exhibition. This conversation is a chance to hear them discuss this creative process that began in 2020.
Artists
- Hamra Abbas
- Yasmina Benabderrahmane
- Ali Kazma
- Amal Al Muftah
- Shaima Al-Tamimi
Co-curators and moderators
- Aurélien Lemonier
- Sheikha Maryam Hassan Al Thani
BIOGRAPHIES
Hamra Abbas
ARTIST
Born in 1976 in Kuwait, Hamra Abbas works in Lahore, Pakistan. She received her BFA and MA in Visual Arts from the National College of Arts, Lahore in 1999 and 2002 respectively before attending Universitaet der Kuenste in Berlin where she did the Meisterschueler in 2004. Her multi-disciplinary work is exhibited in group exhibitions worldwide since 2003. Her most recent solo exhibitions was Every Colour is a Shade of Black at COMO Museum of Art, Lahore, in 2020. She was the recipient of the Jury prize at Sharjah Biennial 9, the Abraaj Capital Art Prize in 2011 and was shortlisted for the Jameel Prize in 2009.Hamra Abbas' artistic practice draws from a myriad of sources and takes a diversity of forms. Her works originate from encounters and experiences that are manipulated by the artist transforming its scale, function or medium. Flowers: Gardens of Paradise 2 bears witness to the artist’s research on traditional Mughal gardens, idyllic landscapes and symbols of paradise in literature, as well as on historic inlay techniques to create a series of intricate mosaics. This work is on view in Art Mill Museum 2030 in Najada Heritage House #15 until 30 March 2023.
Yasmina Benabderrahmane
ARTIST
Born in 1983 in Rueil-Malmaison, France, Yasmina Benabderrahmane is of French, Moroccan and Algerian origins. She trained at Les Beaux-Arts de Paris and at Le Fresnoy—Studio National des Arts Contemporains in Tourcoing, France. She is currently based in Paris. Benabderrahmane experiments with analogue film and gelatin silver print photography. Her distinctive artistic practice is situated halfway between documentary and filmed diary. She collects and probes the visible world by focusing on fragments as well as invisible material, the sonic and the visual, to create a body of stills or moving images. Her work touches on subjects that are tethered in traditional modalities while adding elements of a contemporary outlook to these rituals. Her multiscreen film installation, The Beast (2017), circumnavigates around the construction of Zaha Hadid’s Grand Theatre of Rabat in the Bouregreg Valley in Morocco, where her uncle is a geologist. She was commissioned to make a film for Art Mill Museum 2030: Rokh is on view in the Flour Mill warehouse until 30 March 2023.
Ali Kazma
ARTIST
Born in 1971 in Istanbul, Turkey, Ali Kazma is a lens-based media artist living and working in Istanbul and Paris. He completed his bachelor of arts at the University of Colorado Boulder and earned a master of arts from the New School in New York. Questioning social organisation and the value of human activity, he highlights the relationship between the visible and the invisible aspects of reality by looking closely at the management of labour, time, bodies, gestures and processes. Kazma’s attentive eye collects specific activities in a broad range of economic, industrial, scientific, medical, social and artistic spheres. He has an interest in spaces of social significance, places of production, in industries and handicraft, as well as in the details of machinery and ritualistic, repetitive daily tasks. He talks about ‘sculpting in time’, in reference to the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. He was commissioned to make work for Art Mill Museum 2030: the video diptych Flour Mill is on view in the Flour Mill warehouse and Najada House #15 until 30 March 2023.
Amal Al Muftah
ARTIST
Amal Al Muftah is a Qatari filmmaker, director and artist who was born in 1994 in Doha and graduated with a degree in communication from Northwestern University in Qatar. She started making films in high school and received acclaim for the award-winning short documentary Al Hamali (2013), which follows the life of a porter in Doha’s Souq Waqif. Al Kora (2014), her first short film, premiered at the Ajyal Film Festival in 2013. Working in Qatar and praised for her storytelling, she has also made two award-winning short films, Smicha (2015) and Sh’hab (2018). She is currently directing a feature film documentary on the Father Emir, in collaboration with the Doha Film Institute (DFI) and the National Museum of Qatar. She was commissioned to make a film for Art Mill Museum 2030: Fi Thikra (In Memory Of) / ذكرى في is on view in the Flour Mill warehouse and Najada House #15 until 30 March 2023.
Shaima Al-Tamimi
ARTIST
Shaima Al-Tamimi is a Yemeni-East African visual storyteller, photographer and filmmaker born in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1984 and based in Doha, Qatar. Her work is inspired by social issues reflective of her lived experiences, drawing on themes of migration, identity and sociocultural issues of the Middle East and, more broadly, the rest of Asia and Africa. Her self-reflective exploration of subjects relating to patterns and culinary culture creates strong narratives, a blend of historical material and fiction. In 2020 Al-Tamimi was a Photography and Social Justice Fellow at the Magnum Foundation, where she developed her multimedia film Don’t Get Too Comfortable (2021), which was nominated for the Orizzonti Award for Best Short Film at the Venice International Film Festival. She also received the Sheikh Saud Al Thani Project Award in Doha in 2021 and is a member of Women Photograph and Everyday Projects, a global network featuring and supporting photographers working in the Middle East and North Africa. She was commissioned to make work for Art Mill Museum 2030: the photographic series A Nation's Bread and A Morsel of Life (Logmet Al ‘Aish) /,لقمة العيش are on view in the Flour Mill warehouse until 30 March 2023.
Aurélien Lemonier
ART MILL MUSEUM CURATOR OF ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN AND GARDENS
Aurélien Lemonier is the Art Mill Museum Curator of Architecture, Design and Gardens. He is an architect, architectural historian, and curator. Between 2008 and 2017, he worked at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and was then Director of the Musée National de l’immigration in Paris. He directed his research towards the domains of architecture of the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. He co-curated the exhibition Art Mill Museum 2030.
Maryam Hassan Al Thani
QATAR MUSEUMS EXHIBITIONS CURATOR
Maryam Hassan Al Thani is Curator for Qatar Museums Central Exhibitions department and Tasweer Photography Festival (https://www.tasweer.qa/). She holds a BA (Hons) in Criticism, Communication and Curation from Central Saint Martins in London. Her previous work within Public Art encompassed both international and local commissions to be displayed across Qatar, including in heritage sites. She co-curated the exhibition Art Mill Museum 2030.
This panel discussion is organised by the Qatar Museums Learning and Outreach Department.
For information about the public programme, in conjunction with Art Mill Museum 2030, please contact: [email protected]
For additional information regarding other panel events and detailed bios, please click here.(opens in a new tab)