A television journalist loses her voice live on air: that’s the starting point for Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria’s latest work, DAMAR TV, presented at the National Pavilion of Qatar at the 61st Venice Biennale. Sirine Boudjadi spoke to her about growing up between two worlds, working with people she loves and letting ideas find their own form.

You grew up between Qatar and the US. Do you feel like you belong somewhere specific, or have you made your peace with being in-between?
The idea of ‘making peace’ implies there was a war to begin with. And I suppose, in some ways, there was. It’s almost like playing oneself at chess. But because this back-and-forth is all I have ever known, I’m not sure I know what a non-bifurcated life would feel like. I haven’t lived in the United States since 1999. I’ve lived in Qatar on and off – going to school there, working there – then in Cairo, and then in many other places, including London, as I split time between my two families. Building a home and a family in a place where you weren’t born and have no blood ties has been its own kind of peacemaking.

You draw, you write, you make films. When a new idea comes to you, how do you know which form it belongs to?
The idea leads the form, and it often morphs from one into another. A screenplay I wrote years ago became my first art show. It was a script for an unmade film called Beretta, and it became Virgin with a Memory, my first UK show at the Cornerhouse in Manchester. A television series I created for Sky Atlantic – Little Birds – and the disappointments that came with that experience, became the art film, Beast Type Song. And there are elements I originally imagined including in a comic book called Qasida, which keep surfacing across my body of work. The form I present something in is rarely the final form.

You’re presenting DAMAR TV at the Qatar National Pavilion during this year’s Venice Biennale. The film centres on a journalist who loses her voice on live television. Where did that image come from?
The film came from a place of personal paralysis. When the war started, I found myself unable to engage with the idea of making art at all – the constant stream of images of pain and atrocity had made it feel impossible. I wanted to process what it means to witness suffering through screens, and what happens when that becomes unbearable. Damar’s story is that question made visible.

You cast Yumna Marwan as Damar and brought in Fatima Al Qadiri, Sulaf Elyas and Sarah Ourahmane. How did those collaborations happen? Were these artists already part of your life?
Yes, almost all the musicians were part of my life. The film had an incredibly tight turnaround, so it had to be built on existing relationships and instinct. Yumna is a long-time friend and an incredible actor and director who I’d worked with before, so there was already a deep shorthand between us. Fatima is also a long-time collaborator, whose track felt perfect for the film. It’s an Arabic cover of an anime theme song that holds exactly the tension between fantasy and reality that DAMAR TV lives in. Sulaf Elyas is a Sudani oud player and songwriter I’d heard about through a friend in Doha; she wrote the beautiful song in the film in a week, from a single brief: what do you do with the revolution when you get it? What do you do with freedom once you have it? Sarah Ourahmane is a brilliant musician I encountered while collecting dry drum beats in Oran, Algeria – casting her as a kind of anti-colonial lunar character felt right for what the film was doing.

The Qatar National Pavilion brings together very different artistic practices and backgrounds. What did it feel like when that collective finally came together in person?
We had been in the same virtual room frequently in the lead-up, but the opening was the first time we were all physically together. It was raining heavily, a torrential downpour, specifically in the hour the pavilion opened, which felt very epic and dramatic, and which I found beautiful. Being present for the improvisation, and for Fadi’s food inside Rirkrit’s tent, alongside Alia’s sculpture – which also appears in my film – it felt like a beautiful gathering of remarkable people – as the title of the exhibition – untitled 2026 (a gathering of remarkable people) – at the pavilion suggests.

What does your life look like outside of a project, when you’re not working?
Being a millennial and possibly a workaholic, I’m not sure anything I’m ever doing isn’t working in some way – though I think I often confuse working with learning. My current obsession is navigation: learning to find my way with a map and compass, with the goal of eventually navigating my way around the world by the night stars.

What are you reading, watching or listening to at the moment?
I’ve been deep in David Graeber’s essay collection, The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World. One piece in particular, “The Bully’s Pulpit,” has really stayed with me. I’m always reading and rereading The Arab Apocalypse by Etel Adnan. For music, I’ve been spending a lot of time with an album called Starfire by SUUTO. And on screen, I’ve been watching old BBC Arena documentaries on YouTube, alongside reference videos that my friend Fatima Al Qadiri sends me for a music video I’m working on for her.

If the woman in DAMAR TV could tell you something, what do you think she’d say?
“Wake up. There’s a world around you” – which is also what the editor of Al Jazeera in 2003 said in an interview in the film control room. It was a very important film for me during the making of DAMAR TV, and which I actually think I might even watch tonight.

What’s next for you?
Finding my way. Using only a map and a compass.

Quick-Fire

Five A film you’ve watched more than three times and would never admit to?
The Big Lebowski is my comfort view. And Robin Hood, the Disney version.

A word in Arabic that doesn’t translate and that you miss when you’re speaking English?
“Khali wali.” It’s more of a phrase than a word, though I suppose we have IDGA* for it in English.

A place you keep meaning to go back to but never do?
Siwa.

A smell that takes you somewhere immediately?
Smokes and Chanel No. 5 remind me of the airport; my mother taking us to the airport when I was a child.

A creative collaborator you’d work with in any medium, any context?
Léo Parmentier. He’s my longest and most consistent collaborator, brilliant mind, amazing editor. And Yumna Marwan, without hesitation. I would work with her in any context on anything. And Lydia Ourahmane, always. ✤