Giuseppe Penone Brings Trees, Thorns and Laurel Leaves to the National Museum of Qatar

Five pavilions, a palace and a fingerprint

Qatar's autumn season is shaping up to be a busy one. On 26 October, the National Museum of Qatar opens Giuseppe Penone: The Inner Flow of Life, a major exhibition of the Italian sculptor, one of the founding figures of Arte Povera. It is on view until 13 February 2027, and entry is included with museum admission.

For anyone less familiar with him, Penone was born in Garessio, in the Italian Alps, in 1947, and was the youngest artist associated with Arte Povera, the movement that turned to humble, natural materials in the late 1960s. He has spent more than five decades thinking about trees as living, flowing things, carving young saplings out of industrial timber, casting his hands into growing branches, and making drawings from his own fingerprints. He represented Italy at the Venice Biennale in 2007, has taken part in documenta four times and has shown at the Château de Versailles, the Centre Pompidou and, last year, Serpentine in London.

The exhibition is curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director of Serpentine, and Issa Al Shirawi, Curator and Head of International Exhibitions at ALRIWAQ Arts + Architecture, in partnership with Studio Giuseppe Penone. It brings together more than 50 sculptures, drawings, installations and photographs, spread across five pavilions built on the museum's Baraha, its outdoor plaza, each devoted to a single material: leaves, porcelain, thorns, marble and leather. More works sit in the Old Palace of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani, around which Jean Nouvel designed the museum, and in its courtyard.

Visitors can expect some of Penone's best-known works. Respirare l'ombra (To Breathe the Shadow), first made in 2000, surrounds you with thousands of laurel leaves, so the room is as much about scent as sight, and it is paired with Alberi libro (Book Trees) of 2017. There is Scrigno (2007), a gilded bronze tree filled with resin among dozens of sheets of leather, Spine d'acacia, Palpebra (2016), made with acacia thorns, and Impronte di corpi nell'aria (2023) in white Carrara marble and bronze. Interestingly, Penone has also made a new wall drawing on site, Propagazione (2026), which grows outwards from a single fingerprint.

In the Old Palace, one of the earliest works on show is Rovesciare i propri occhi (To Reverse One's Eyes) of 1970, a famous sequence of photographs in which the young artist wears mirrored contact lenses, so that his eyes reflect the world instead of seeing it. Outside the museum, meanwhile, two monumental bronze trees holding river stones from his Idee di pietra (Ideas of Stone) series, which began at documenta in Kassel, have been installed at Old Doha Port.

So why Doha? For Penone, the building itself is part of the answer. "The architecture of the National Museum of Qatar in Doha is inspired by the crystals of the desert rose evoking the vitality and growth inherent in the mineral itself," he said, as reported by Qatar Tribune. "Displayed in this extraordinary setting, my work engages in a dialogue with the country's natural elements, water, sun, wind, and sand, and with the vital flow they embody."

Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Hamad Al Thani, Director of the National Museum of Qatar, sees a natural fit with the museum's mission. "We are proud to present this significant exhibition at the National Museum of Qatar, where our history, heritage and relationship with the natural environment are fundamental to the stories we tell," he said.

Qatar Museums describes the show as Penone's first exhibition in the Middle East, but that is not quite right. Beirut Art Center gave him a solo exhibition, Breath Is a Sculpture, in 2014, and in 2017 he made Germination, a permanent commission for the opening of Louvre Abu Dhabi. What Doha offers is the largest presentation of his work in our region so far, and that is no small thing.

It also lands in the middle of a remarkable week for Qatar Museums. On the same day, the Fahad Bin Ali Palace opens to the public for the first time as an exhibition venue, with shows on Qatar's wooden doors and on life and death in pre-Islamic Qatar. A day earlier, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art opens its exhibition on the Baghdad Modern Art Group, and the first Rubaiya Qatar quadrennial follows in November.

Perhaps what is most significant here is the setting. Penone's whole practice is about the slow exchange between bodies, trees, stone and water, and showing it in a desert country, inside a building shaped like a desert rose, invites us to read it in a new way. We can't wait to see how the laurel leaves smell in Doha.

Giuseppe Penone: The Inner Flow of Life is on view at the National Museum of Qatar, Doha, from 26 October 2026 to 13 February 2027.

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