(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF), attended the opening of two major exhibitions at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (a QF member) yesterday.
HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, was also present at these shows, which celebrate Indian art and the 2019 Qatar-India Year of Culture. The two unique exhibitions will run until July 31.
According to Qatar Museums (QM), ‘M F Husain: Horses of the Sun' exhibition honours the work of 'a renowned artist and contributor to modern Indian culture and the history of art in the 20th Century while Delhi-based Raqs Media Collective's ‘Still More World' displays 13 multi-object and video installations, two of which were curated for the show in Doha.
‘M F Husain: Horses of the Sun' is the first large-scale exhibition of his works and I am honoured to have been chosen to curate it, said curator Ranjit Hoskote, an acclaimed Mumbai-based poet, art critic, and cultural theorist. He noted that this exhibition showcases over 100 works of the artist, which include paintings, films, textile works, and drawings drawn from QF and QM collections, as well as from private collections from the Gulf region and other regions globally.
The show, Hoskote said, presents the artist's creative masterpieces across more than six decades, bringing and examining three ideas at the heart of Husain's body of work. 'First: the idea of home, as a habitat remembered from childhood, shaped in the present, or to be discovered through exploration. Second: the human adventure of creativity across societies, periods, and disciplines, he added. 'Third: a pluralist approach to the divine and cosmic aspects of being, articulated through the symbolism of the world's religions and philosophies. He said M F Husain was a foundational figure in the history of Indian modernism, as a member of the vanguard formation known as the Progressive Artists Group. According to Hoskote, M F Husain's works were inspired by two World Wars, the Cold War, Algeria and Vietnam, South Asia's conflicts, and the West Asian wars.
Meanwhile, the works in the second exhibition re-examine human progress and natural resources through historical and contemporary movements of people and the way terrains change. 'Raqs Media Collective are leading contemporary artists working at an international level, whose work challenges understandings of the world in playful and poetic ways, said Mathaf's Curator Laura Barlow, who is also the curator of this exhibition.
'Unravelling structures of economies, time, and language, their work examines the shifting state of contemporary life and boundaries of visibility, she noted. The installations, ranging from videos to textiles and sculptures made between 2011 and 2019, are being presented in three galleries at Mathaf and across Doha, including two new productions, ‘Dohas for Doha' and ‘To People,' developed especially for this exhibition.
QM also announced that entry fees to the National Museum of Qatar, Museum of Islamic Art, and Mathaf will be QR50 for adults; QR25 for students and free for children under 16 starting March 28. However, Qatar residents with valid Qatar ID, Culture Pass Plus and Culture Pass Family Members, as well as visitors with disabilities, can visit these museums for free.
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