Qatar Museums brings “expanded cinema” to Venice Biennale, showcasing Middle Eastern voices 

Qatar Museums (QM) is making waves at the prestigious Venice Biennale with its unique exhibition, “Your Ghosts Are Mine: Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices,” which explores the fascinating interplay between cinema and visual art.

This unique show, on display at the Cavalli-Palazzo Franchetti until November 24 and curated by Matthieu Orlean, features the works of 40 filmmakers and artists from the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia. It examines themes of community life, memory, transnational crossings, and exile through a powerful narrative told in moving images.

“The first idea of this exhibition was this question: ‘How can we introduce film in the history of art, next to visual art, video art, experimental cinema,” said Catherine Grenier, director of Concept at Art Mill Museum, in a video posted on QM’s social media channels.

“Your Ghosts Are Mine showcases a diverse range of films and video works spanning genres, including fiction, documentary, animation, and memoir. The works often blend fictional narratives with real-life events, modernity with tradition, and spirituality with postcolonial sensibilities.

Zeina Arida, director of Mathaf, Arab Museum of Modern Art, highlighted the importance of dialogue, saying: “We were very interested in using film and putting them together because it is about a conversation, it is about these dialogues. Forty-four filmmakers and artists together was really a real narrative”.

Doha Film Institute CEO Fatma Alremaihi underlined the exhibition’s role in providing a platform for underrepresented voices, saying: “This is a new platform to showcase these voices and to bring the underrepresented films and stories from our region to a huge and vast audience that is related to art. It is a new way of showing the films. It is very unique”.

The exhibition is presented across 10 galleries, each focusing on a distinct theme: deserts, ruins, women’s voices, borders, exile, and more.

“It’s never the same. It is a statement, there is a dialogue and the kind of mirror effect between the people watching, and the filmmakers and the artists but also the audience and the exhibition, and we are all part of the same community and we kind of putting the people in the centre,” Orlean said.

The exhibition goes beyond traditional cinematic experiences, showcasing films that defy categorisation and examine human experience's depths.

Renowned artist and filmmaker Joana Hadjithomas said: “All the sections of the exhibition are in a fragmentation because it is only some excerpt of the films but it’s strongly has a connection and it builds other connections so you rediscover in a way your images differently”.