A group show of three displaced Rohingya photographers documenting their experience of living in the largest refugee camp in the world is a compelling highlight of the festival’s second edition
The second edition of Tasweer Photo Festival Qatar launches in Doha this week. The biennial seeks to promote the diversity of Qatari culture and amplifies the voices of photographers from Qatar, Western Asia and North Africa (WANA). The festival launched in 2021, spearheaded by Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, to build more opportunities for practitioners in this region to experience, study and practice photography. It is just one of a “suite of festivals” planned by Her Excellency – also Chairperson of Qatar Museums – that will be rolled out over the next few years, including a design biennale and contemporary art quadrennial. “It all exists under this vision that Her Excellency has of what a post-oil economy could look like for Qatar,” says artistic director, Charlotte Cotton. “The creative industries are part of that discussion.”
The festival programme, co-directed by Cotton and Qatari photographer Khalifa Al Obaidly is centred around five core exhibitions and installations. One particular highlight is a group show I Am The Traveller And Also The Road held at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. Twelve photographers will present projects that they have been developing over the last year, thanks to winning the Sheikh Saoud Al-Thani Project Award, an annual grant, at the previous edition of the festival. Fatema Bint Ahmad Al-Doh’s project about the Kalash people, one of the smallest ethnic minority groups in Pakistan is described by Cotton as “compassionate and beautiful…and quite incredible in the way that they draw us into close encounters with a secret place and ancient tribe”. The show also includes work by Hayat Al-Sharif, Shaima Al-Tamimi, Salih Basheer, Mohammed Elshamy, Reem Falaknaz, Rula Halawani, Fethi Sahraoui, and Abdo Shanan and others. Some photographers, like Al-Sharif and Syrian photographer Mouneb Nassar, will be exhibiting in a gallery space for the first time.