Beyond Immediate Vision: A Curator’s View

Q. How does the theme of Bu’ed Nadhar shape the main message you want visitors to take away from the exhibition?

Aisha Al Sowaidi: Bu’ed Nadhar, meaning “beyond immediate vision,” explores foresight and resilience through design. The exhibition looks at how design can respond to changing conditions while remaining connected to place, knowledge and cultural memory. Across the works, there is a shared interest in looking beyond the immediate outcome and considering what can be carried forward, reinterpreted and developed for the future.

Q. The exhibition views craft as a “living archive.” How do the 32 works blend historical memory with modern design?

Al Sowaidi: The exhibition approaches craft as knowledge that continues to evolve rather than something fixed in the past. Across the 32 works, designers engage with materials, techniques and forms that carry historical and cultural memory, while experimenting with new processes and contemporary applications. Rather than reproducing tradition, the works explore how this knowledge can remain active, relevant, and open to reinterpretation.

Q. Artists used local materials like Qatari clay, sand, and palm leaves. What did they learn by experimenting directly with the desert landscape?

Al Sowaidi: Working directly with local materials allows designers to understand the landscape through making. Clay, sand, palm and other locally available materials each carry their own characteristics, limitations and possibilities. Experimentation becomes a way of learning from the environment itself, creating a closer relationship between material, place and design.

Q. How do these projects from the Gulf and nearby regions challenge Western, industrialised ideas of design?

Al Sowaidi: The projects broaden the understanding of contemporary design by beginning with the specific conditions of the region—its materials, climate, methods of making, social practices and inherited knowledge. They demonstrate that innovation does not necessarily depend on industrial production or separating the contemporary from the traditional. It can also emerge through adaptation, material knowledge, craftsmanship and locally rooted ways of making.

Q. How do these designs connect with the local community and its everyday social rhythms, rather than just being objects in a gallery?

Al Sowaidi: Many of the projects begin with practices that are already part of everyday life: gathering, hospitality, making, eating, building and sharing knowledge. The residency process also encourages engagement with craftspeople, workshops, communities, and local forms of expertise. The resulting works therefore extend beyond the idea of the gallery object and reflect the social and material contexts from which they emerged.

Q. How did you balance your dual role as the director managing the Liwan space and the curator shaping the creative vision for this exhibition? 

Al Sowaidi: The institutional direction of Liwan and the curatorial approach to Bu’ed Nadhar are closely connected. Liwan is conceived as a space for experimentation, research, production and exchange, and the exhibition brings together outcomes that have developed through this environment. Bringing five residency programmes into one exhibition also provides an opportunity to reflect on Liwan’s wider role: not only as a place where design is presented, but as a platform where ideas can be developed, tested, produced and shared.

Q. What long-term impact do you hope this exhibition leaves on Liwan’s future as a design hub?

Al Sowaidi: Bu’ed Nadhar reflects Liwan’s continued commitment to creating the conditions for designers to research, experiment and produce new work. While the exhibition presents the outcomes of five residencies, it also makes visible in the wider processes behind them—from research and material experimentation to collaboration and production. In the longer term, Liwan aims to strengthen this ecosystem and provide a platform where designers can move between research, making, production and public engagement, while contributing to a growing design discourse emerging from Qatar and the wider region.

Residencies Behind Bu’ed Nadhar

Bu'ed Nadhar features works developed through five residencies and collaborative experiments by 16 artists across the Gulf and neighbouring regions:

Ideas FROMM. Industry Residency in collaboration with residency lead FROMM. Designers: Asma Shalkame, Abdulla Al Obaidly, Noora Al Henzab.

Shaping and Crafting the Future Residency in collaboration with residency lead Campus MaNa. Designers: Aia Zaina, Haya Abu Al Saad, Reema Abu Hassan, Bashair Al Khulaifi.

Liwan Craft Residency—Oasis: Our Design Ecosystem by residency lead and curator Asma Derouiche and Hayakum by project lead Cristián Mohaded. Designers: Shawky Abdalla and Abdul Rahman Anwar, Saga Elkabbash, Joe Bou Abboud, Stephen Amoyo, Charlotte Rodenberg, Varvara & Mar and Zainab Al Shibani.

Athar by Noora Al Melhim.

Bar-Bahr by Jassim Al Nasrallah.

Bu’ed Nadhar is part of Design Doha and will take place in Liwan Design Studios and Labs from 5 November 2026 until 31 January 2027.