Bouthayna Al-Muftah

Bouthayna Al Muftah is a Qatari artist that received a Bachelor of Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts Qatar in 2010. Upon her graduation, Al Muftah directed her artistic practice to painting, printmaking, typography and documentation, which evolved over the years into large-scale installations and performance pieces. The core inspiration behind her artistic production is collective memory, where she borrows elements from the people of Qatar’s oral history and folklore and readapts them to reflect her relationship with her land’s past.

 Al Muftah’s fascination of all facets within the context of her country’s memories has led her to develop her research and reflect on life in the old neighborhoods of Qatar and the people who shaped them. As an approach to resuscitate and reconstruct past moments and memories into contemporary settings, she often finds characters and stories from these neighborhoods that transform into the abstract figurative results seen in her work today. Al Muftah gradually turned to conceptual documentation through book-binding while reflecting time and space through a historical lens. Her latest body of work is based on a performance art series that is an exploration of aspects from memory and nostalgia placed in the present moment and extrapolating into the future. The result, a surrealist amalgamation of aspects that make up the lands fabric based on defining characteristics of tradition and identity.  Immortalizing that which was previously lost in the abyss of time.