Open Call: What is Home to You?

Open call

Art Mill Museum

Submission deadline: 30 September 2026

The Art Mill Museum's Open Call: What is Home to You is a community activation inviting the public to explore the meaning of home through the identities, memories, and spaces that shape their sense of belonging.

The Art Mill Museum invites you to take part in What is Home to You? Open Call exploring the theme of home—a question that resonates across countries, cultures, generations and experiences.

Launched in October 2025 as a digital participatory Open Call accompanying the Beyt Beytak. My Home is Your Home. La mia casa è la tua casa exhibition in Venice, this initiative invites people to reflect on what home represents today—whether as a country, a place, a memory, a feeling or a sense of belonging.

Through a range of creative formats, including videos, writing, photography and visual expression, participants are invited to share personal reflections and perspectives.

Since its launch, the Art Mill Museum Learning and Audience Department has continued to collect submissions, building a growing digital archive of stories that reflect the diverse meanings of home.

As Beyti Beytak travels to Doha in autumn 2026, selected submissions from the Open Call will be presented digitally in the exhibition's Education Space, connecting audiences in Qatar with voices from across the community and beyond. Submissions will also continue to be featured online as part of a growing digital community wall.

By bringing together these personal stories, the Open Call creates a collective dialogue that celebrates the diversity of experiences and evolving meanings of home.

Public Open Call: What is home to you?

Art Mill Museum invites the public to take part in an open call exploring the theme “What is home to you?”, a question that can be interpreted in many ways, from personal memories and cultural identity to places, people and feelings of belonging.

At a moment when the meaning of home can shift, expand, or be redefined, we welcome reflections that speak to both personal and shared experiences.

Submissions can take many forms, including videos, paintings, writing, photography and other creative expressions.

This is an opportunity to share your story and be part of a wider community conversation reflecting the richness and diversity of experiences across Qatar and beyond.

Apply now

Selected Submissions

1 / 6

Hamad Al-Athbah — Above The Sand

This photograph was taken in my grandfather's majlis. It is a place filled with childhood memories, long conversations, and the sound of the oud. Today, the space is quiet, but it still holds what once lived there. The floating instruments represent sounds and moments that are no longer present, yet never truly gone. To me, home is not just a physical place—it is a feeling that remains, even after the room falls silent.

2 / 6

Anisha Samuel Kahlkot — Home is Where the Heart is

Living in Qatar from 1995 ever since I was born, my life has been a series of departures and longings. After years of separation following my father's resignation in 2000, seeing the Qatar Airways logo on the wing in 2003 signaled our family's reunion. Even as leaving for university in 2013, and a 22-month COVID-19 exile pulled me back to India, my heart remained in Qatar. Returning in 2021 felt like 2003 all over again. For a Third Culture Kid, home isn't a map coordinate; it's the safe space built by parents— the place where your heart finally exhales.

4 / 6

Ahad Alshamari — Walls of Memory

We grew up in this house filling it with laughter, voices, and small stories. We used to gather without thinking, enjoy the simplest moments, and feel that time did not matter as long as we were together. Today everything has changed; we grew up and went our separate ways, and the house remains the only witness to those days. Every wall holds a memory, and every room keeps a secret from our childhood. The house has become full of longing, as if memories live in it more than we do. Despite the absence of people, laughter still lives in the place, reminding us that once we were one family and one heart.

5 / 6

SillyGoose — Dreaming of Home

This piece was inspired by my love for animals, especially the rescue cats who've become part of my life. It captures a tender moment: a cat curled in sleep, its posture shaped by a quiet yearning. Not for comfort, but for something less visible—belonging, familiarity, home. Caring for animals that come from fear or displacement has taught me that even the smallest lives hold stories of longing. This piece honours that truth—that stillness, too, can carry memory and hope. It's soft and warm, like the little lives that inspired it.

6 / 6

Ganna Ali — House Away from Home

What is home? For an Egyptian born and raised in Qatar—the daughter of a mother who was also born and raised here—home is not a single coordinate, but a constant tug between two lands. Every summer, when my family returns to Egypt, we are surrounded by our house, our relatives, and our heritage. Yet, even there, I find myself longing for the streets and the rhythm of Qatar. I am "home," yet I am homesick. This diptych explores that internal displacement through the very skin of the earth. The Qatar map is crafted using sand from the Qatari desert and handmade paper derived from local palm trees, featuring a physical house key representing the tangible security of the life I know. The Egypt map is created with paper made from Egyptian palm trees and adorned with native flora, representing the ancestral home that exists in my blood and my memories. By utilising the tactile elements of both landscapes—the sand, the fibre, and the plants—I am documenting the sensation of belonging to two places at once, and the quiet ache of being incomplete in both.

What is Home to You?: Workshop Series

To celebrate International Museum Day, Art Mill Museum hosted a series of What is Home to You? collage workshops, activating the Open Call. Through collage-making and discussion, participants explored personal interpretations of home, identity, belonging and memory. Workshops were held with members of the public and Qatar Museums staff, creating a space to celebrate museums while contributing creative responses to the Open Call.

Collaboration with the Teens Hub also created a space for diverse groups of young people to reflect on the meaning of home through creative expression and dialogue, sharing their personal perspectives on identity, home and belonging."