On view during the Venice Biennale, Your Ghosts Are Mine, Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices highlights works by more than 40 filmmakers and video artists
On view at ACP–Palazzo Franchetti through 24 November 2024
H.E. Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani attends the opening of Qatar Museums’ exhibition, “Your Ghosts are Mine”, during the Venice Art Biennale with H.E. Maria Tripodi, Italian Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs; Saida Mirziyoyeva, First Assistant to President of Uzbekistan.
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. The exhibition, titled Your Ghosts Are Mine, Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices, on view at ACP–Palazzo Franchetti from 19 April to 24 November, presents a journey in moving images through contemporary experiences of community life and memory, transnational crossings and exile.
Your Ghosts Are Mine, Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices is produced by Qatar Museums and co-organised by Doha Film Institute, 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, with exhibition design by architects and spatial designers Cookies (Federico Martelli and Clément Périssé). The advisory committee includes Fatma Hassan Alremaihi, Zeina Arida and Catherine Grenier. Project management is by Minas Stratigos and Khalifa Al Thani is the Exhibition Manager.
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. The films and video works span genres including fiction, documentary, animation and memoir, often blending invented narrative with fact, modernity with tradition and spirituality with postcolonial sensibilities.
Included are excerpts from works by more than 40 artists including Faouzi Bensaidi (Morocco), Jessica Beshir (Ethiopia), Ali Cherri (Lebanon), Tala Hadid (Morroco), Joana Hadjithomas (Lebanon), Khalil Joreige (Lebanon), Soudade Kaadan (Syria), Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese (Lesotho), Asmae El Moudir (Morocco), Amal Al-Muftah (Qatar), Shirin Neshat (Iran), Larissa Sansour (Palestine), Abderrhamane Sissako (Mauritania), Elia Suleiman (Palestine), Ramata-Toulaye Sy (Senegal), Tariq Teguia (Algeria), Shaima Al Tamini (Yemen) and makers from more than a dozen other countries, as well as video works by artists Wael Shawky, Lida Abdul, Hassan Khan and Sophia Al Maria. A full participant list follows below.
Her Excellency 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 Doha Film Institute (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-organizers 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.”
“The exhibition architecture created by Cookies engages with each of the curatorial themes, offering visitors a diverse and immersive experience,” said Federico Martelli and Clément Périssé. “For each room in the exhibition, Cookies designed unique sculptural structures that respond to the technical needs of displaying cinema in an exhibition context. This approach ensures that the exhibition engages with the architecture of the palazzo, facilitating moments of immersion where spectators can fully engage with the carefully curated selection of films from the Doha Film Institute catalogue.”
On view through 24 November, the exhibition is one of several Qatar Museums initiatives coinciding with the Venice Biennale. Mathaf is lending several works by major Arab modern artists to be exhibited in Foreigners Everywhere, the main exhibition of the 60th International Art Exhibition curated by Adriano Pedrosa. Qatar Museums is also a supporter of the Nigeria Pavilion at the Biennale and the founding sponsor of the Art for Tomorrow conference, which takes place in Venice from 5 to 7 June 2024. Your Ghosts Are Mine, Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices remains on view during the Venice International Film Festival, opening 28 August.
A schedule of film screenings, which will be held from Thursday to Sunday at 3:00 PM throughout the exhibition’s run, is available here.
