Ektashif: Uzbekistan

Ektashif: Uzbekistan brings together new work by seven Qatari artists made after a journey through Uzbekistan. The exhibition opened at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha on 3 September 2026, inaugurated by HE Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, and runs until 28 November 2026 in the museum's fourth floor West Side Gallery.

The artists are Aisha Al Muhannadi, Abdulla Al Fakhroo, Lina Al Aali, Maryam Abel, Ameena Al Boinin, The Nourah and Hameed Al Qahtani. In 2025 they travelled to Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara, visiting historic sites and taking part in workshops in ceramics, embroidery, miniature painting and Islamic geometry.

The works respond to what they found there: Timurid architecture, geometric brickwork, ceramics, ikat textiles and craft traditions that are still practised today. Among the pieces on view are Anor (Pomegranate), 2026, a suspended installation of slip cast porcelain, and Strings of Memory, a wool carpet measuring more than three metres.

Ektashif, Arabic for "discover", is MIA's travel programme for Qatari artists, organised with Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs; earlier editions went to India, Türkiye, Spain and Morocco. "The mission of Ektashif is to provide Qatari artists the opportunity to engage directly with the places, traditions and living heritage of Islamic art," says Shaika Al Nassr, Director of the Museum of Islamic Art.

The show runs alongside Uzbekistan: Heritage in Motion, which gathers around 146 objects from MIA and 13 Uzbek institutions spanning more than 3,000 years. Seen together, the two exhibitions set a living Qatari practice beside the historical material that inspired it, a pairing Al Nassr describes as celebrating "the creative possibilities that emerge through cultural and artistic exchange."