As the Image Unfolds: The Language of Athar

As the Image Unfolds: The Language of Athar is a group exhibition of photographs by Ghada Al Mawlawi, Mohammed Fakhroo and Raja Aderdor. Organised by Tasweer Photo Festival Qatar, it runs at Bayt Al Wakrah in Al Wakrah, Qatar, from 26 October to 15 December 2026. The show brings together three bodies of work: still lifes of family objects, documentary and staged images of shops and markets, and photographs of street signs.

The three artists made the work during the Tasweer Residency, a five-month programme based at the Tasweer Studios in Bayt Al Wakrah. Its theme is athar, an Arabic word for traces and imprints, which the residents took up as both subject and method. They worked through research, trial and regular conversation with three mentors: Ghayyan Al Amine, Khalifa Al Obaidly and Maria Ovsyannikova. Al Amine and Ovsyannikova curate the exhibition, and Al Obaidly directs Tasweer.

In Portals of Belonging, Al Mawlawi turns to her two grandmothers and the hospitality they offer. She photographs heirloom dishes, table settings and the hands that peel fruit or pour tea, treating these objects as traces of decades of care. Fakhroo's For Sale? grows out of his earlier series Feed Me. It moves through souqs, shops and markets, picturing workers, mannequins, goods and waste alongside staged self-portraits. Aderdor's Signs: Seen, Yet Unseen gathers handwritten notes, religious phrases, taxi stickers and shop signs photographed in Qatar and Morocco, from Marrakech to Merzouga.

Bayt Al Wakrah combines a historic house with a set of studios, and Tasweer uses it for residencies, exhibitions, workshops and community projects through the year. The exhibition opens to the public on 26 October 2026 from 5pm to 7pm. It forms part of the Qatar Creates 2026/2027 season of cultural programming.