Belonging, Framed
Doha did not shout this spring. It breathed in. Tasweer opened in April and the city felt newly tuned, like someone turned the treble down so you could hear the bass line. The third edition of Qatar’s photography festival stretched across five venues with eight shows and one stubborn idea that kept showing up in different clothes: belonging. In West Asia and North Africa, that word is not a trend, but a lived verb. Movement, memory, migration. All of it in one frame, talking to itself without asking for permission.
At the Fire Station, As I Lay Between Two Seas read like a quiet manifesto. Twenty five artists from the Arab world and its diasporas treated home as a practice, not a GPS pin. The work carried ruptures and repairs, tenderness and argument, the way a family table does. Over at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Daoud Aoulad Syad’s Territories of the Instant gave Morocco back to itself in the kind of images that do not flirt with you. They stand still. They tell you what the light looked like and who was standing in it. At Katara Cultural Village, Obliteration, Surviving the Inferno: Gaza’s Battle for Existence unfolded in stages outdoors. No spectacle, no gloss. The sequence forced you to count the cost.
Prizes shape energy, and Tasweer knows this. Refractions brought together the Project Award photographers from 2023 and 2024 in two neighboring buildings at Katara. Sudan, Gaza, Iraq, Morocco. Scattered reflections and horizons that refuse to quit. Threads of Light clustered the Single Image winners at The Company House in Msheireb. Thirty two photographs that could have been a competition but felt like a chorus. Back at the Fire Station, Al Mihrab placed Khalid Al Musallamany’s study of Qatar’s mosques in one room so old and new could look at each other without blinking. In the next gallery, After The Game revisited the World Cup by paying attention to the city that hosted it. Then there was Garangao 2025, kids and lanterns and sweets in the Barahat. Call it continuity with sugar on top.
The walls were only half the story. Tasweer ran symposia, masterclasses, portfolio reviews, and public talks. It brought in the VII Foundation for a twelve week vocational track and held the door open for underrepresented voices. Schools were in the mix. Families too. The festival did not just exhibit. It built capacity. It gave people skills and then asked them what they wanted to make.
Count the numbers if you want. More than eighty eight artists. Five venues. Eight shows. The program ran through June 20, 2025. Those stats tell you scale. They do not tell you temperature. Walking the route from Fire Station to Mathaf to Katara to Msheireb, you felt a region looking at itself with care. You noticed how the strongest images rarely explained themselves. You realized belonging can be a ritual, a protest, an alleyway, a coastline, a face that stays with you when you sit down to dinner.
Now the lens turns forward. Tasweer has opened the 2025 Awards. The window is clear. August 1 to September 20, 2025. Two tracks. The Single Image Award asks for one photograph that holds a personal story. Selected photographers receive 2,000 QAR and real visibility across exhibitions and programming. The Project Award is the big swing. A 30,000 QAR grant to begin, develop, or complete a body of work. It comes with curatorial guidance, mentorship, publication and public program opportunities, and an exhibition pathway at the fourth edition in 2027. Director Khalifa Al Obaidly puts it simply: these awards fund the work and give it a stage, so the region’s image makers can speak in full voice.
All of this lands in a milestone year. Qatar Museums turns twenty, and the National Museum of Qatar turns fifty. Evolution Nation, an eighteen month campaign, threads those anniversaries into a measured celebration of where the culture has been and where it is headed. Tasweer sits inside that moment like a steady heartbeat. Not flashy. Not rushed. Just disciplined care for the stories that help a place know itself.
If your work lives in the seam between here and elsewhere, if you carry a home that changes shape each time you name it, this is the time to send the file and trust the frame. Belonging is not a finish line. It is a practice. Tasweer has given it rooms, routes, and a deadline. The rest is your eye, your story, your courage.
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