As the Image Unfolds – The Language of Athar

Presenting: Ghada Al Mawlawi

Project Title: Portals of Belonging

Ghada is a passionate and curious Qatari photographer specializing in studio-based still-life and product photography. Her artistic journey began at an early age, and she has developed her interest by focusing on detailed work and forming deep connections with her subjects. To Ghada, photography is a meditative process, fostering calm and creativity.

Beyond the studio, Ghada is deeply interested in documentary photography. She seeks to capture everyday life and archive personal and collective memories, preserving passing moments and intimate stories that reflect her own identity and experiences.

Project Statement:

This is a personal archival project documenting the emotional significance of hospitality through the lens of my two grandmothers. Functioning as an intimate portrayal, the work captures the "emotional texture" of heirloom objects and table settings, exploring the act of giving as a form of non-verbal communication and a distinct, deeply rooted love language. I have come to realize that the quiet, focused act of peeling a piece of fruit or the steady pour of tea is the sincerest act of love I can receive. Through my grandmothers' hands, these gestures have become a profound bridge between generations, offering a sense of safety and belonging that words could never carry.

I find myself haunted by the quiet details others might overlook: the worn edge of a favorite plate or the way light catches a vessel that has been used for over forty years. These objects are the "silent witnesses" of our lives. They are portals to childhood, carrying the weight of decades of care and the persistent spirit of the women who used them to nourish us. By focusing on the material traces of these rituals, the tools of nourishment and the settings of care, the project explores how objects continue to embody a human presence even in absence. It is a visual reflection on how love is archived through the senses, honoring the domestic rituals that define our architecture of home.

Presenting: Mohammed Fakhroo

Project Title: For Sale?

Mohammed Abdulaziz Fakhroo is a Qatari filmmaker, photographer, and writer whose practice moves between observation, memory, and the quiet tensions of everyday life. Working across photography and moving image, he is drawn to familiar spaces that often go unnoticed, where small gestures, repeated objects, and ordinary scenes begin to reveal something deeper about culture, behavior[MW1] , and the systems people live within.

During the residency program, Fakhroo used his studio space to slow down his photographic process. What began as an instinctive way of making images gradually shifted into a more intentional and reflective practice, shaped by mentorship, experimentation, sequencing, and repeated encounters with his subject matter.

His residency project, For Sale? - explores consumer culture through shops, markets, streets, workers, mannequins, and systems of display. Rather than offering a fixed conclusion, the work moves between documentary observation and constructed imagery, inviting viewers to look more slowly at the ordinary.

Across his practice, Fakhroo is interested in the moment where the familiar becomes strange, and where images begin to uncover the structures, we often pass by without seeing.

Project Statement:

For Sale? began from a discomfort with consumer culture, not as a rejection of buying and selling, but as a question about what happens when convenience becomes a structure.

Developed during the Language of Athar residency program by Tasweer, the project grew from my earlier work Feed Me into a more deliberate photographic inquiry into consumption, display, labor, and desire. Moving through souqs, shops, markets, workers, mannequins, products, waste, and staged self-portraits, the work follows a descent into consumer madness.

The photographs look at ordinary commercial spaces until they begin to appear strange. Cultural symbols become packaged goods. Mannequins become bodies without life. Workers appear central to the system yet often overlooked within it. Objects, clothing, animals, tools, and people begin to share the same visual language of display, pricing, and consumption.

I do not stand outside of this system. I am also inside it. The photographer, worker, mannequin, shopper, object, and viewer all become part of the same structure of desire, labor, value, and display.

The title remains a question: what is for sale, and what is consumed in the process?

Presenting: Raja Aderdor

Project Title: Signs: Seen, Yet Unseen

Raja Aderdor (رجاء أدردور) is a photographer and visual storyteller whose practice is deeply informed by a life lived between cultures. Born in Morocco and raised across Kenya and Niger before settling in Qatar in 2004, her work explores how ideas, traditions, and language move across borders. This multicultural upbringing has shaped her unique perspective on the relationship between people and place, focusing on the layers of the environments she inhabits.

With an educational background in documentary production, linguistics, and women’s studies, Raja’s artistic focus is rooted in the investigation of social structures and the representation of identity. Her work reflects a commitment to documenting lived environments through a sociological lens, looking closely at the quiet forms of labor and the ephemeral visual signals that shape everyday landscapes. Professionally, Raja operates at the intersection of publishing and social campaigns. She is dedicated to making knowledge more accessible and human-centric, using storytelling to drive community engagement. This professional drive for connection translates directly into her artistic practice, where she emphasizes the importance of community building.

For Raja, photography is a collective experience. She frequently organizes and leads photo walks, bringing people together to inhabit the city as a community of observers. Her work is rooted in a documentary-driven approach, utilizing both digital and analog film photography to capture the textures of lived environments. Through these shared walks and her work in publishing, she seeks to connect research and culture with broader audiences, fostering empathy and shared understanding through the power of the visual word.

Project Statement:

For years, I found myself photographing signs without realizing they would become a body of work. I was drawn to handwritten notes, religious phrases, taxi stickers, warnings, shop signs, and other messages that people leave within public space.

Photographed across Qatar and Morocco, the work looks at how these everyday signs reveal the cultures that produce them. A pedestrian crossing figure wearing a Qatari thobe, hand-painted shop signs in Marrakech, illustrated rental advertisements in Merzouga, or a religious phrase added to a street sign all communicate far more than their immediate message. They carry traces of identity, faith, humor, authority, labor, and belonging.

Moving through these places, I began to understand signage as a language of its own. Some signs instruct us, some protect or prohibit, while others allow people to claim space and leave something of themselves behind.

These details are so embedded in everyday life that we often stop seeing them. Through photography, I bring them back into view and ask what they can tell us about a place when we choose to pay attention.

Signs everywhere. Seen, yet unseen. Waiting to be noticed.

Ghayyan Al Amine

A Lebanese filmmaker, photographer and educator based in Qatar since 2011. His passion for photography extends to his various completed and ongoing projects that tackle memory, autobiographical approaches and cities and their inhabitants and forms. He received the ADPP (Arab Documentary Photography Program) grant in 2021 for his project "Imagined Cities" and has exhibited in Doha, Beirut, New York, Dubai, Livingston - NC among others. As an educator he has given workshops and talks for Tasweer Qatar and has guest spoken at the Painting and Printmaking class at VCU Qatar.

Maria Ovsyannikova

Maria Ovsyannikova is a fine art photographer, curator and visual storyteller from Moscow, Russia. She lives and works in Doha for the past 15 years. Inspired by Qatari culture, heritage and nature she started taking photos as a hobby, which over few years transformed into a true passion. In early 2016 Maria quit her office job to become full time artist and photographer. Her images have a storytelling element, reflecting local culture in artistic and dreamy way. She is exhibiting her work on regular basis to bridge different cultures, create a dialogue and to highlight and spread the beauty of the world. In June of 2024 she founded “Editions” a gallery art space dedicated to photography and fine art printing, allowing photographers to showcase and sell their work as prints.

As the founder of Editions Art Space, she explores the intersection of fine art printing, curation, and exhibition design, creating spaces where photography and visual narratives come to life. With a passion for print production, she brings artistic works into tangible form, ensuring they are preserved and appreciated beyond the digital realm.