Alternative Realities, an exhibition showcasing works of five

Fine Arts seniors from Virginia Commonwealth University in

Qatar opens tomorrow. By Umer Nangiana

Keeping up with its task of promoting both budding and established artists, Katara Art Center (KAC) is presenting Alternative Realities, a group exhibition featuring artworks by five Painting and Printmaking seniors from Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar (VCU-Q).

The exhibition, opening tomorrow, will last through the month at KAC (Building 5) in Katara Cultural Village. The opening is at 6pm tomorrow. As students approach the end of their four-year education at VCU-Q, they become increasingly focused on preparations for their senior show, scheduled to take place in the spring of 2015.

The exhibition at KAC marks the first stage in the run-up to the final show, and the works exhibited act as a prelude. “It will allow students a chance to develop exhibition strategies and ideas, and to engage with their work from a viewer’s perspective. All of the students represented in this exhibition engage in one form or another with the notion of reality and the question of how reality is constructed,” noted KAC.

From the mechanical, to the surreal, the works investigate the perception through the various cultural, historical and philosophical threads. Working across a range of media that originate from the locus of Painting and Printmaking, the artists also incorporate sculpture, photography and video.

“These are all our senior students from our Painting and Printmaking department, which is newly established. The department was set up this summer. It will be a great opportunity for the department students to show their work outside of the university to a broader and bigger audience and get feedback to further improve their work,” Director of Painting and Printmaking at VCU-Q, Rhys Himsworth told Community.  

“I will be biased towards their work because I am from faculty. But our current seniors’ work is really good. Some of them are already award-winning artists.  Hana al-Saadi won the Damien Hirst challenge and Emelina Soares won the Create and Inspire award. They have been doing some fantastic work and we are proud of them all. I really hope that they are able to do networking with the community outside and get positive feedback to their work,” Himsworth added.

VCU-Q and KAC share a vision for an artistic community in Qatar that embraces, supports and champions the work of emerging young artists. Through numerous previous collaborations students and faculty at VCU-Q have been enriched and their work brought to new audiences through exhibitions, book launches, film screenings, internships and workshops.

VCU-Q is the only international branch campus of the prestigious Virginia Commonwealth University of the Arts in Richmond, Virginia, USA. Established in 1998 through a partnership with Qatar Foundation, VCU-Q offers students the opportunity to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in fashion design, graphic design, interior design and painting and printmaking, a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history and a Master of Fine Arts degree in design.

The KAC is a home-grown, trans-disciplinary platform in Qatar founded by Tariq al-Jaidah. KAC’s aim is to develop and nurture local talent across all creative disciplines, with a strong focus on building a sustainable artistic community within Qatar.

Emelina Soares was one of the 12 winners of the Create and Inspire Contest earlier this year. The competitors came from countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the UK and were selected for their responses to this year’s competition theme, ‘The World is not Black & White’.

The competition, organised by The Crossway Foundation, in partnership with Art Jameel and Qatar Museums, searches for creative individuals. The prize was a two-week trip to Brazil. When Qatar Museums Authority held internationally renowned artist Damien Hirst’s exhibition ‘Relics’ in Qatar later last year, they also announced a challenge for aspiring artists. The challenge was to create a painting, an image, a sculpture, or multi-media piece based on the artist’s exploration of life and death.

The prize was a free trip to meet the artist in his studio at Gloucester in London and Hana al-Saadi won it. Hana, a then-junior year student at VCU-Q, studying Painting and Printmaking, had a submission titled ‘Snail Print Factory’, a piece of installation art that explores three important stages of the natural lifecycle; eating, mating and reproduction. All this documented by slime trails left behind on paper.  

The participating artists in the Alternative Realities at KAC include Roda al-Nassr, Hana al-Saadi, Sumam Azzam, Salma Hassan and Emelina Soares.