“Setbacks: Tasweer Project Award” by Qatar Museums

Qatar Museums presents “Setbacks: Tasweer Awards for Photographic Projects,” which explores identity and place in different ways in a region where identity has long been shaped by movement and adaptation. Housed in two interconnected buildings at Katara Cultural Village (Buildings 45 and 46), the exhibition brings together the works of 18 contemporary photographers come from the whole of Arab world who examine how ancient patterns of mobility collide with modern barriers, borders, and environmental transformations.

Through diverse visual approaches—such as aerial photography, family portraiture, recovered archives, and long-term studies—these works reveal how the concept of belonging in the ME and NA is constantly in flux. These photographs navigate the tensions between movement and roots, personal memories and collective histories, and adaptation and preservation

These works suggest that belonging in this context, should not be understood as a static relationship to place but rather as a dynamic process of negotiation with ever-changing landscapes and geopolitics. As light refracts through a prism, these artists' lenses reveal how identity fragments and reshapes, creating new forms of belonging even in moments of radical change. 

Through their diverse styles displayed in these juxtaposed spaces, they map a complex landscape where personal nostalgia intersects with displacement, where heritage preservation meets transformation. This exhibition, part of the third edition of the Qatar Photography Festival, showcases the work of award-winning photography projects from 2023 and 2024. Through their lenses, the photographers exposed how a sense of belonging persists despite change, as communities maintain their essential connections to the land, water, and each other. These images document change and participate in the ongoing work of translating cultural memory into contemporary creative frameworks.