Crafting Futures: Design Recency in partnership with year of culture Morocco 2024

Design Doha Residency — Qatar | Morocco: Crafting Design Futures

Design Exchange

Design Doha

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Exhibition opening on 1 December 2024

MIA, Gallery 4

in partnership with year of culture Morocco 2024

The Design Doha Residency celebrates the intersections of contemporary craft practices and innovative design, fostering connections between international and MENA-based designers, makers, and artisans. Through a year-long collaboration with the Years of Culture initiative

The 2023/4 Residency, will culminate in Qatar | Morocco: Crafting Design Futures, an exhibition showcasing innovative works by designers from Qatar and Morocco. Four Qatar-based designers engaged in a weeklong residency in Morocco, exploring traditional craft techniques in ceramics, wood, and textiles. Meanwhile, five Moroccan makers spent ten days in Qatar, collaborating with local designers at Liwan Creative Hub.

This cross-cultural exchange fostered new creative directions while supporting heritage practices, resulting in works that bridge tradition and contemporary design. The upcoming exhibition will reflect the residency’s commitment to sustainability and the future of craft in both nations.

Program Structure

This project is divided into 3 distinct phases that run concurrently and are tied to the Design Doha and YOC calendar of events and will necessitate the collaboration between key stakeholders across the Creative Hub and QM and design and craft colleagues and organizations in Morocco. The project includes:

Phase 01:

Residency among Moroccan and Qatar designers:

Throughout 2024, the main focus of the project will be on the exchanges of idea, practices, crafts and design innovation among the selected Moroccan and Qatari designers. This phase will include a site visit of the Qatari designers to Morocco in January 24 and the visit of the Moroccan designers to Qatar in February 2024.

Phase 02:

Development stage of the works for Designers of Qatar/Morocco:

Between June-November, the designers will work to create objects related to their own practices and processes of making, specifically their engagement with design and crafts, and also that demonstrate the shared knowledge and exchange gained through the Residency. These works will be displayed in the exhibition taking place in Qatar in November 2024.

Phase 03:

Curatorial and exhibition:

In November 2024, the exhibition will present the work and also evidence of the impact of the residency, as well as the actual making of the objects through engagement with craft traditions and contemporary practices. To achieve this, the exhibition and each work will be well contextualised in MIA with supporting photographs, video, and text materials, making it a space where visitors can view objects and gain insights into the making processes employed.

designers/makers/artists of Qatar

Abdulrahman Al Muftah

Abdulrahman Al Muftah is a maker and designer whose approach to his multi-media practices are impelled and guided by his research interests and methods. Al Muftah has a deep commitment to the materials (scents, soil, fabric) of Qatar and the region and this body of research underpins much of the work he creates.

Majdulin Nassrallah

Majdulin Nasr Allah’s work holds incredible power through its quiet contemplations on political and social injustices of our times, and often specifically those enacted upon Palestine and Palestinian people. Nasr Allah takes forms, motifs, scents, and materials that hold and evoke Palestine and that reality in its fullest poetic, nostalgic, brutal, and unjust forms, and she creates imbues them within everyday objects for our lives and homes to ensure we never forget.

Reema Abu Hassan

Reema Abu Hassan founded the incredibly successful “Craft Encounter” company, the mission of which is to literally put clay and an ability to work with the earth and to make within the reach of all. Her own work is deeply committed to clay as an element of culture and through which cross-cultural dialogue, knowledge and understanding can be gained.

Nada Elkharashi

Nada Elkharashi is a multi-media product designer whose work speculates about the relationship of design and the public’s who engage with the objects produced in relation to some of the largest societal questions of our time, such as water scarcity, social relations and fabrics, and climate justice.

designers/makers/artists of Morocco

Amine El Gotaibi

Amine El Gotaibi is an African maker and artist of the MENA region whose work is deeply connected to the land of the region, as well as the materials, mediums and traditional craft communities of Morocco. El Gotaibi collaborates with communities of makers and thinkers to create environmentally-scaled works that comment on political and social realities through materials as wool, rammed earth, metals and light.

Sara Ouhaddou

Sara Ouhaddou is a designer and artist whose practice is grounded in research, which often explores questions around the relationship of various forms of making to history, historical contexts and realities, and the social fabric of specific cultures and communities. Ouhaddou partners with artisans to create new modes of working with traditional craft to create collaborations across her work and those of craft communities in Morocco and the region.

Amine Asselman

Amine Asselman’s work is dedicated to the centuries old Moroccan craft tradition zelige hand-cut tiles and to Islamic pattern and visual language within Morocco and across the Mediterranean, of which he has a PhD. Asselman works with zelige artisans within Morocco to create new forms and modes of creating zelige based works for our contemporary times, as a way to sustain and innovate within this traditional craft.

Bouchra Boudoua

Bouchra Boudoua is a ceramic designer whose work engages with the long history of Moroccan clay crafts and forms and within this context she experiments with glazes, designs, and pattern that often refer to the Amazigh traditions and visual languages.

Hamza Kadiri

Hamza Kadiri is a renowned maker who is very much working within the long lineage of traditional wood artisans and craftspeople within Morocco. This tradition is the backdrop to his practice, which has emerged as a leading one in the region, and globally, for the creation of functional, often room scale, objects through hand crafted wood and today he is exploring and moving into both monumental and conceptual approaches to this craft and medium.

Curator of the Design Doha Residency:

Gwen Farrelly

Gwen Farrelly is Curator for Design Doha Residency 2024 Qatar | Morocco: Crafting Design Futures. She also serves as the Connect & Be Connected Lead for internationalisation and partnerships at Ireland’s National College of Art and Design (NCAD). And, she is an art historian, independent researcher and a consultant for global strategic development in cultural and higher education organisations.

Curator Statement

Qatar | Morocco: Crafting Design Futures marks the culmination of the year-long Design Doha Residency, in partnership with Year of Culture. Crafting Design Futures brings together new works by the group of makers participating in the Residency, four of whom are Qatar-based, and five from across Morocco.

Reema Abu Hassan, Majdulin Nasr Allah, Abdulrahman Al Muftah, and Nada Elkharashi, all of whom work in Qatar, undertook a weeklong residency in Morocco. They visited the studios of the participating Moroccan makers; studied at a traditional craft centre with master educators of Zellige tiles, wood, ceramics, and textiles; visited sites of contemporary making, and engaged with academics, curators, designers, and artisans. The designers bring this experience to the works included in this exhibition, extending their already robust practices in response to this opportunity for cross-cultural exchange.

The well-established practices of Moroccan designers Amine Asselman, Amine El Gotaibi, Sara Ouhaddou, Bouchra Boudoua, and Hamza Kadiri all reflect a deep dialogue with traditional craft forms. Their disciplinary range extends from textiles and wood to installation work with ceramic, and glass. Each Moroccan designer spent ten days in residence in Qatar, based at Liwan Design Studios in downtown Msheireb. During this visit, they engaged with the Qatar-based designers; met leaders of design and craft fields and engaged with diverse audiences through talks and workshops. The residency in Qatar residency enabled Moroccan participants to expand their practice into new directions, as is demonstrated in the works on view here.

All the works highlighted in Qatar | Morocco: Crafting Design Futures share a deep commitment to the sustainability and support of heritage communities, while also representing innovation within craft and design. In bringing these nine makers together, the exhibition shows how the rich dialogue between nations in our region can spark new and enduring creativity.