To reinterpret is not to revise. At Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, it’s something closer to listening again. With two concurrent exhibitions, Resolutions: Celebrating 15 Years of Mathaf and Resolutions: Evolving Realities, running until August 8, the Arab world’s leading modern art institution turns its anniversary into an act of curatorial reckoning, revisiting works that were made decades ago and continue to resonate today. Sirine Boudjadi speaks with researcher and curator Arthur Debsi about the thinking behind the shows.
As part of Mathaf’s 15th anniversary, the museum reinterpreted the narrative of its permanent collection in the exhibition Resolutions: Celebrating 15 Years of Mathaf. What curatorial intention guided this decision?
Arthur Debsi: For Mathaf’s 15th anniversary, we chose not just to refresh the permanent collection display but to fundamentally rethink its narrative. Our intention was to present Mathaf not only as a museal structure but as a long-term cultural project originally shaped by the vision of its founding collector, Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammed bin Ali Al Thani. We traced back the museum’s history, exhibitions and collaborations; and explored the collections from multiple perspectives. The new display is thus organised into four chapters, each curated by a member of the curatorial team: Infrastructure: Traces of a Legacy by Fatima Mostafawi; Mathaf as Institutional Memory: An Exhibition History by Hadeel Al-Kohaji; Education: Art as Knowledge Creation by Nora Hussein; and Representation: The Writing of History, by me.
Your gallery explores how artists across West Asia and North Africa developed a shared visual language in the postindependence era. What drew you to that idea of a collective artistic identity?
Every country from the Arab world is represented in Mathaf’s collections and each collection reflects its own distinct characteristics. However, many artworks reveal commonalities in themes, references and artistic approaches, particularly between the 1960s and 1980s. The works that I selected demonstrate a regional artistic movement that highlights artists’ effort to define an ‘Arab identity’. Many of these creatives, such as Iraqi artist Shakir Hassan al-Saïd and Lebanese painter Rafic Charaf, drew inspiration from sources grounded in a shared historical and cultural heritage including folk literature (Antar and Abla, One Thousand and One Nights) or were committed to political concerns such as the Palestinian cause seen in From the Years of Palestinian Slaughter (1976) by Iraqi artist Dia Azzawi. It was also a moment when the Pan-Arab ideological and political project was spreading all over the region and expanded to cultural initiatives like the First Biennial of Arab Art in Baghdad 1974. In the chapter ‘Representation: the Writing of History’, my aim was to showcase diversity in artist backgrounds and contexts while emphasising the ideas and dialogues that connect their practices.
Resolutions: Evolving Realities is the second exhibition marking Mathaf’s 15th anniversary, revisiting works first presented at the museum’s inauguration in 2010. What drew you to re-engage with these pieces 15 years on?
The curatorial narrative of Resolutions: Evolving Realities is a continuity of Mathaf’s anniversary exhibition. More specifically, it explores the seminal role that the museum has played in building, sustaining and engaging with artistic communities over time. The exhibition examines how a museum collection should not remain fixed in the past but instead functions as a living platform that can be continuously reinterpreted. Through this lens, some artworks originally presented in Mathaf’s inaugural exhibitions – Told/ Untold/Retold: 23 Stories of Journeys Through Time and Space (2010) and Interventions: A Dialogue Between the Modern and the Contemporary (2010) – are revisited in the context of 2026. The themes explored by 10 artists and collectives remain deeply significant today yet acquire alternative discourses in response to both changing historical contexts and through the perspectives of new generations of audiences.
Many of the artists featured in the exhibition were already exploring themes such as memory, identity and social change. Looking at these works today, how has their resonance evolved over time?
Artists often serve as witnesses to their time, yet the issues they address are rarely confined to a specific moment or place. Rather, they tackle matters that resonate across communities and generations. The works in the exhibition show how artistic inquiry can transcend its original context and continue to speak to contemporary realities. These artworks refer to historical, social and political themes. Over time, the concerns that they raised persist. For example, Cow Belly (2010) by Emirati artist Hassan Sharif, critiques the consequences of industrial production and consumerism on the environment, an issue that has become increasingly pressing in the face of today’s ecological challenges.
The exhibition places these works back into a contemporary context rather than presenting them as historical documents. How did you approach reactivating these artworks for today’s audiences?
Our approach aligns with our methodologies in the research and curatorial department at Mathaf and that defies the usual comprehension of modern and contemporary art production. We chose a selection of artworks that are connected to the theme of ‘Time’; which indicates the transformation of the artworks’ interpretation. Fifteen years ago, the artwork series titled Fade Away (2010) by Palestinian artist Jeffar Khaldi and the work installation WHY! (2010) by Syrian artist Buthayna Ali, address topics of migration, identity construction and cultural uprootedness. Fifteen years later, it appears that these topics continue to shape and inform our present experiences across the Arab region and beyond.
Both exhibitions suggest that a museum’s collection should never be fixed. How important is it for institutions like Mathaf to keep reinterpreting their own holdings?
I believe that museums should be understood as interactive spaces where knowledge is produced, shared and debated. Reinterpreting artworks allows museums to remain relevant to new audiences while acknowledging that the meanings of artworks are never static. They evolve alongside social, political and cultural contexts. Both Resolutions: Celebrating 15 Years of Mathaf and Resolutions: Evolving Realities reflect this approach as they invite to see Mathaf not simply as a guardian of artistic heritage but as an active participant in ongoing conversations.
Fifteen years after its opening, how has the way audiences engage with modern and contemporary Arab art evolved, and where does Mathaf fit into that conversation?
Fifteen years after Mathaf’s opening, the way audiences engage with modern and contemporary Arab art has considerably evolved. First, it is important to acknowledge the sustained and collective efforts of artists, scholars and cultural practitioners across the Arab world who have worked to restore modern and contemporary Arab art to its rightful place within global art history. These efforts continue today, and they have been instrumental in reshaping how these narratives are studied, exhibited and understood. In parallel, there has been a noticeable and growing interest in these artistic practices within international institutions, which are seeking to introduce wider audiences to Arab artists and their practices. This reflects a broader and more urgent commitment within the global museum landscape to expand representation and ensure that these narratives are more fully integrated into mainstream art discourse. ✤
