3ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Our first acknowledgement is to our guide and Course Director Dr. Karen Exell. We are grateful to you for helping us to keep asking questions during the project. Your patience and necessary sense of humor have developed our strengths and given us momentum when we each needed guidance; thank you from us all. We hope that we have contributed to the University as much as it has to our personal growth and future careers and we hope to be remembered fondly as the second intake of MA students at UCL Qatar.To all of the administrative, library and academic staff of UCL Qatar who have guided us and given insightful support thank you, with our particular gratitude to Brett Kershaw, whose marketing expertise and efforts to promote our work have been considerable and inspiring. The MA Museum and Gallery Practice students 2014 would also like to acknowledge the contributors that have made the exhibitions possible with their gifts in photography, Amit Kumar Jain and John McNally and translation, Ghaida Al-Sawalha and Alaa Laabar.To our families who have been a constant support we thank you.

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UCL QATARUniversity College London (UCL) is one of the worlds leading multi-disciplinary universities, currently ranked fourth in the world by QS World University Rankings. UCL Qatar is a partnership between University College London, Qatar Foundation and Qatar Museums Authority and is a centre of excellence for the study of museology, archeology and conservation at the post-graduate level. While drawing upon the renowned expertise of UCLs leading academic scholars, teachers and scientists, our programmes have a significant focus on the Gulf and the wider Middle East region.

UCLQURATESCURATION. INTERPRETATION. COMMUNICATION. EDUCATION.

UCLQurates is a student led initiative to engage in the dynamic and vibrant contemporary arts scene in Doha, Qatar. By creating yearly exhibitions and partnering with esteemed local institutions, UCLQurates aims to forge a link between UCL Qatar and the community by creating innovative and intuitive exhibitions that speak to many people both here and across the globe.

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FOREWORDThe two exhibitions created this year by the students on the MA in Museum and Gallery Practice at UCL Qatar couldnt be more different. Ana Arabi?, at the Katara Art Center, investigates contemporary Arab identity and its expression in art through the curation of works from a major private collection. Is the Sea a Woman?, at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, presents a response focussing on local myths of women and the sea to the retrospective of the artist and poet, Etel Adnan, Etel Adnan in all her Dimensions (16th March-6th July), showing in the main galleries. These exhibitions creatively articulate some of the major debates currently circulating in the region issues of identity in modernity, of stereotyping and myth-making, of the centrality of poetry and stories in regional conceptions of history and heritage and they do this in very different ways. At Mathaf, the space is curated to immerse the visitor in a world of words, sounds, symbols, images; to offer an embodied experience of poetry and the spoken word, and power of the sea as a woman a central image in Etel Adnans work. At Katara Art Center, the exhibition forms one part of an intellectual riposte to lazy assumptions about art and identity in the Arab world programmed discussions with major collectors and curators enhance and enrich the dialogic process begun by the exhibition itself.The exhibition projects form part of the Masters degree and they are entirely the work of the student cohort, from concept to realisation. This year, the projects began with the challenge: here is a collection, here is an exhibition, here are two venues, what will you make? Over the course of the semester the students all graduates, from diverse backgrounds and countries, skilled, creative and intelligent take on key exhibition production roles (curatorial, education, design, evaluation and so on) and develop the exhibition projects within a classic exhibition development framework: concept, development, implementation. This is teaching as practice, learning through experience, and this experience can be intense, challenging and very real. On occasion during the last few pressured weeks some team members have suggested that the projects might not succeed; at no time have I ever doubted that they would. The exhibitions themselves are just one part of wider projects that include educational programming and an online presence across a number of platforms, to allow for reach and legacy. Even if, like me, you are unsure what a tweet is, let alone a hashtag, I encourage you to experience all aspects of the exhibitions projects, in the spaces themselves, in dialogue, art and poetry-making events, and in cyberspace. At the end of all of this, you may have the answer as to why we still debate Arab identity, and whether the sea is a woman

Dr. Karen ExellDegree Coordinator UCL Qatar

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9IS THE SEA A WOMAN?

At Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art

What happens when a philosopher meets an Egyptologist? When an architect meets an art historian? When an education professional meets an anthropologist? When a statistician meets an artist? When a fashion designer meets a project manager?

UCL Qatar students, in partnership with Mathaf, present a unique exhibition as a response to the exhibition Etel Adnan In All Her Dimensions, which starts on 16th of March at Mathaf. This exhibition uncovers the link between Etel Adnans work and Qatari culture, reflected in the sea as a symbol of femininity.The display will present a journey through complex and inspiring pieces of Etel Adnans poetry, Qatari poetry, traditional Qatari folktales, music and film, all exploring women and the sea. The exhibition will also be experienced through open participation. Visitors inside and outside the space will be encouraged to share stories through writing, recording, social media sharing, and artistic interpretation of themes addressing femininity, the sea, and the Etel Adnan Exhibition.

ANA ARABI?At Katara Art Center

This exhibition offers a space to explore contemporary Arab art and its relationship with identity. It can be seen as a dialogue between the artworks whilst questioning the process of reaching and defining a sense of belonging.Contemporary Arab art is responding to the challenges of identity-as- process that rapid change creates on a local and global scale. Mixed- media artworks move beyond traditional artistic canons in their expression of the complexity of Arab identity.In order to explore this ambiguous subject matter the exhibition introduces four key frameworks of identity: the geographical, the political, the religious and the socio- cultural, in an attempt to understand why we continue to ask, what is Arab identity?

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PROJECT MANAGEMENTGetting involved in a new project is always exciting. At the beginning you enjoy the brainstorming, the rush of creativity... But if you want to complete this new project you need a schedule, and deadlines, basically everything you dont want to have. Ive never worked as a project manager before, and I have found it quite challenging because Ive never been an organized person. What is most important to me now, despite tiring days and nights, is the opportunity to learn a new way to work, in order to improve myself.

Giorgio PigaAna Arabi?

Being a Project Manager is like being a conductor; when all these different music players, each one unique with specific skills, perform in synchrony the outcome is a masterpiece! Working as a Project Manager in an educational environment is not less challenging than being in a corporate environment. The teams are newly formed, the timelines are greatly compressed, and we are simultaneously working on other parts of our degree programme. In addition, we worked on an exhibition with no objects, which required enormous creativity. Finally, we all made a personal effort and we worked miracles, because as Albert Einstein said: Imagination is everything. It is the preview of lifes coming attractions.

Vicky MargetiIs the Sea a Woman?

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ANA ARABI?The original concept for the exhibition, an exploration of identity in the Arab world was constructed by the curatorial team, who imagined a singular form of Arab identity that, whilst accommodating regional, historical, political and cultural diversity, could be applied on a global scale as one unified term. The resulting exhibition is very different: it now asks why we still question the nature of Arab identity, creating a space where multiple notions of Arab identity are presented and opposed, seeking to raise questions about the stereotypes and factors that create them.Through the research, trying to assemble a mosaic of artworks that would visualize the question of identity, the diversity and contradictions we encountered frustrated the original unitary image of Arab identity.We discovered that this sense of singularity could be attributed to an outsiders perspective, or even invention. This is exactly what Yto Barradas installation Lyautey Unit Blocks (2010) discusses the cultural singularity that globalization suggests, the constructed monocultural identity presenting an allegory of the changing Arab cultural landscape and the effects of a global policy on regional identity. But why is the question of Arab identity still being asked? Is it about the identification of a global economic component? Could it be the quest for an alternative to western cultural hegemony? Is it about politics? Religion?

Faced with these questions, we ended up realizing that in order to proceed towards any kind of answers regarding such complicated issues, we should first accept how diverse and complex notions such as identity and belonging are, and instead of seeking single answers we should create spaces of discussion and debate focusing on the actual process rather than the result. Therefore, identity becomes identities, the answer becomes a question, and the art space becomes a space of discussion, able to create new forms of collective expression.

Michailangelos Vlassis-Ziakas, Curatorial Team

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ANA ARABI?

The exhibition Ana Arabi? starts with a question. We as the curatorial team wanted to raise a question and provide space for visitors to be inspired. In the exhibition we focus on some of the increasingly well-known artists with cultural roots in the Arab world. These artists are no longer making traditional art to reflect only the local culture, but rather utilizing new media and ways of expression to produce works of mounting complexity. Some of artists whose work is shown in this exhibition were born in western cities, or spent time living or studying in western countries. The impact of this multi-cultural background can be seen in their work, and they can be regarded as having a critical perspective on both sides of the East-West debate. Under the circumstance of the political and economic challenges in Arab society today, Arab artists and writers play a critical role in helping to shape public debate around identity in non-violent ways.

Wenjing Liu Curatorial Team

Art is about poking different points of views. . . Its not about giving answers, its about raising questions and offering a different way to look at things. Egyptian artist Mariam El-Quessny

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IS THE SEA A WOMAN?Is the Sea a Woman? uses themes inspired by the works in the Etel Adnan In All Her Dimensions exhibition running concurrently at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, to create an immersive environment exploring women and Qatari seafaring traditions. At first it seemed impossible to discover a connection between the work of Etel Adnan and Qatari traditions. Our work began with researching the rich artistic expression of Etel Adnan, including poetry, novels and painting. One particular aspect of her work attracted our attention her inspiring use of the sea as a symbol of femininity. Guided by this, we began to research Qatari stories, poems and music, which reflect a centuries-long interdependence of people and the sea in this region. From here, one more step was made: we decided to tell the story about Qatars traditions from the female perspective. Thus, the concept of our exhibition was born. The space presents traditional Qatari folktales, poetry, and music while using the words of Etel Adnan to reflect on different recognitions of femininity within these mediums. Participatory elements in the exhibition invite visitors to share their own stories and reflect on the Etel Adnan exhibition in a local context. Our entire experience encourages new interpretations of traditional stories addressing women and the sea.

Bojana Zivkovic & Hannah PerryCuratorial Team

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ANA ARABI?The interpretation for this exhibition was a challenging task; Arab identity is a complex subject matter to tackle. It encompasses the complicated rhetoric of the Arab diaspora, its intrinsic relationship to religion, its merging of traditional cultural practices with modernity and contemporary life, as well as for many the centrality of political affiliation. The curatorial concept was built upon Oskar Hansens Open Form Theory (1959), which is a philosophy rooted in architecture, using a structure as a position that will define ones reality. As Hansen noted, it will help us define ourselves and find ourselves in the space and time in which we live Therefore we wanted to incorporate the feeling of walking through the space rather than around it, situating the viewer as a participant in the exhibition and its ideas. To achieve this we wanted to leave the space free of imposing wall text and possibly distracting media. A small simple gallery leaflet formed as a series of postcards has been created to offer interpretation of the works whilst still allowing the participant to create their own interpretation and explore their individual ideas.

Samantha Janet Hearfield & Somaya TamimiInterpretation Team

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IS THE SEA A WOMAN?

Poetry and stories draw from our collective past to guide us in the uncertainty of our future. Etel Adnans feminine interpretation of the sea links with Qatari traditions. In many traditions, oral histories and tales are carried and told by women. The interpretation introduces the relevance of the elements of sea and femininity as found in the works of Etel Adnan. Etel Adnans work revolves around many themes that draw you into the poetry, with the sea and the presence of femininity in her lines, color, and approaches to these elements.Etel Adnan brings to Qatar echoes of the traditions of pearl diving and seafaring of the many brave men and their beloved women who waited for their safe return. These traditions, songs and sentiments are old but contemporary in this interpretation that links Etel Adnans work to Qatari traditions.

Maral Bedoyan & John McNallyInterpretation Team

People have all sorts of stories to tell me But for the stories of women, its something else. The women have kept contact with the earth, if I may say, in the ancient roles of witness and memory keepers. Etel Adnan

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EDUCATIONWhat is your first memory of the sea? What are the colors, shapes and visual textures of Qatar? Etel Adnans abstract paintings of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, CA (USA) and the sea in Beirut, Lebanon evoke rather than represent the landscape it is as if we are standing at a distance, squinting our eyes in the bright sunlight, only making out shapes and colors. Her paintings explore the way that these images, moments, experiences imprint in our minds. How would you express your memory of Qatar and the sea?

Lesley Gray Is the Sea a Woman?

From being static temples that enshrined objects, museums and galleries have adopted a participatory approach to engage in a dialogue with their audiences through various stimulating educational programs. Well-planned and meticulously executed programs will always have a meaningful exchange between the gallery and the audience, enabling the viewer, or in the case of a talk, the listener, to contextualize themselves as active agents in the process of artistic creation and exhibition design theories.

Amit Kumar JainAna Arabi?

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DESIGNThe communication between space and concept is an integral part of exhibition creation, and in seeking to express this relationship, the design team worked with both Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and Katara Art Center to examine how space can confront the conceptualizations of two very different exhibition themes and express their ideas in a visually cohesive and innovative way.

Is The Sea A Woman? Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern ArtThe design team sought to weave The Sea through the exhibition space at Mathaf, to create a fluid exhibition that would highlight the curatorial and interpretive message of linking Etel Adnans work to femininity through the motif of the sea. In the process, the space was transformed into a nexus of past, present and future histories as told by museum visitors and through contemporary poets themselves. As a highly interactive and immersive space, the exhibition focuses on different areas in which the visitor can experience poetry, oral history, and the traditional link between Qatari culture and the sea. This includes interactive stations, inquisitive hands-on workshops and a vibrant visual atmosphere that transports the visitor to the symbolic realm inhabited by Etel Adnans work.

Ana Arabi? Katara Art CenterIn order to explore the boundaries of identity, and how processes of identifying and belonging occur, an amorphous and malleable white cube space in Katara Art Center was transformed into a physical space that opens a dialogue on aesthetics, politics, language, and religion. By interrupting a familiar visual space, the design mirrors the ambiguity and the blurring of boundaries inherent in the process of identity construction. The focus of the design was to place the artworks in dialogue with each other and to highlight how elements of identity eventually converge in a space where the nature of identity is questioned.

Hailey Perelman & Alkindi Al-JawabraIs the Sea a Woman & Ana Arabi?

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MARKETINGWith these exhibition projects we wish to promote Qatar and UCL Qatar as a dynamic, young and vibrant environment for cultural practice. The Museum and Gallery Practice students have curated two exhibitions this year, which were marketed as a collaborative, yearly UCL exhibition project in order to create the synergies required to make both exhibitions a success. This combined effort created UCLQurates, an initiative, concept and platform, intended to become an innovative annual feature of Dohas cultural calendar, and a legacy for future UCL students. The emphasis of the marketing strategy has been to focus on the process behind curating and developing an exhibition. This has made the project more human and has facilitated a dialogue between UCL students and the arts community within Doha and abroad, inviting them to follow us behind the scenes as we research, curate and design the exhibitions. An integral part of the marketing strategy has been social media and by using the hash tag #UCLQurates on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter we have shared our curating journey online.

Louisa Brandt & Alanoud AlattiyaAna Arabi? & Is the Sea a Woman?

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AUDIENCE EVALUATIONTo avoid the public and exhibition colleagues running away as you approach with another questionnaire or focus group request, a sense of perspective on when a project needs one sort of scrutiny or another is helpful in the evaluation role. This involves putting a timeline together that maps across the exhibition with the formative evaluation (before and during) stage helping shape the exhibition in areas including content, design and educational programming and the summative (after) phase of evaluation informing the teams appreciation of their successes and an understanding of how better to shape future projects. From the concept to the take- down of an exhibition, evaluation is also a personal journey all team members experience by asking themselves questions such as Are we focused on the correct messages?, How can we better explain our ideas to the audience? Such open- mindedness is a strength of excellent team-work and one that enables the diversity of the publics responses during evaluation to be heard and assimilated into the final exhibition.

Sonia Brewin- Mueller & Alanoud Alattiya Is the Sea a Woman? & Ana Arabi?

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DRIVING AROUND DOHA

The research undertaken regarding the subject of Arab identity for this exhibition was like a journey across an unknown planet, as the curatorial team came from cultural backgrounds ranging from the Mediterranean to East Asia. At some point we realised that curating an exhibition about contemporary Arab identity without bringing Sophia Al Maria into the discussion would feel deficient. Sophia Al-Maria is an American-born Qatari artist, writer, filmmaker and one of the most beautiful minds of the young Middle East, who at one point based her oeuvre around some extremely controversial topics whilst simultaneously being placed in the position of a role model for young Gulf society by giving graduation speeches and interviews. Despite the cultural differences between the curatorial team and Al Maria, there exists not only a personal connection due to us all having been born in the 1980s in a period of rapid globalization, but there is something more important that we have in common: an ability to use contemporary art as a tool to share criticism about todays younger generation.

BB Roulette BBMing while driving on Sheikh Zayed Roadi

According to the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who said: A man who, beyond the age of twenty-six who finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure, Qatari men have nothing to worry about. Sophia Al Maria seems to have a different opinion on this topic. Al Maria says that the previous nomadic Bedouin way of Qatari life is lost, and, ironically, with the coming of oil wealth, it has been destroyed by another form of travelling: the car. The new society, blessed with wealth and with probably the biggest educational potential in the world, is still male dominated and conservative, and suffers from boredom and a lack of challenge. As Al Maria puts it in conversation with the writer and curator, Omar Kholeif, it is trying to commit generational suicide, speeding in enormous cars and showing off for no reason, treating the streets of Doha as liberally as the desert a site for the popular dune bashing, which according to some of the locals takes more lives than the accidents occurring on the roads. Modern Gulf society glorifies cars as a symbol of wealth, and mobile phones as a tool to escape the loneliness and the void surrounding them.

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Roundabout Rodeo Competitive event in which multiple males in Land Cruisers attempt to road-tie a female driver in a Nissan Sunny.

Qatari youngsters in SUVs take part in a sort of a power play on the roads. Driving with one hand, they physically interfere with other peoples space while using the other hand to whatsapp everyone they know. Al Marias approach to car culture is influenced by the English novelist, J.G. Ballard, author of many dystopian novels including Crash, a story about symphorophilia, car-crash fetishism. Dystopian fiction and we might presume that Al Maria has this in mind can have a socially positive impact. According to Keith M. Baker it can provide fresh perspectives on problematic social and political practices that might otherwise be taken for granted or considered natural and inevitableii . It is interesting to consider that a reference to the novel Crash recently appeared in an art project realized by the Gulf artist, Manal Al-Dowayan, in her research project devoted to the frequent car accidents that take the lives of female schoolteachers in Saudi Arabia, shown at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Spring 2014.

These issues are just snapshots of Qatari youngsters reality. Contemporary art with its intimacy and subtlety seems to be an ideal tool to speak about this and other issues of contemporary identity.

Mateusz SapijaCuratorial Team

Ana Arabi?

i This and the following term is taken from Sophia Al Marias The Gulf Colloquy Compendium, a vernacular digest of words coming from the past and phrases from the future.ii Baker, Keith M. 1994.The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature. Westport: Greenwood Press.

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONSPage 7 ANTAR, ZiadLovers, 2010Photographs, Black and white silver print photograph

Page 10ALBAIH, Khalid The Arab Spring PacMan, 2013Prints, Color print face-mounted on Plexiglas

Page 12HALAWANI, Rula Unknown, UnknownPhotographs, Photograph in black-and-white on paper on aluminum panel

Page 15KIOMO, Moumtaz Lahdhatou Chaghaf (A moment of passion), 2010Prints, Digital print on canvas

Page 26ALKADHI, Ayad Coffin VI, 2008Paintings, Acrylic on canvas

Page 27ABILLAMA, LaudiPortrait of Sabah, UnknownPaintings, Acrylic and lead pencil on canvas

Page 30ALSHAIBI, SamaThe Tethered, 2012, HD an SD video production, 8 min 42 secCourtesy: Ayyam Gallery

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