Venezia, 7 May. (askanews) – The Qatar Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale unites music, cinema and food as interconnected cultural practicesdeveloping through encounters that explore hospitality, migration, memory and continuity in the Arab world. The temporary pavilion was designed by Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, with Kuwaiti-Puerto Rican artist Alia Farid’s monumental resin and gas can sculpture installed inside the tent. Lebanese artist Tarek Atoui brings together musicians reacting to field recordings and archival sources from all over the region in improvised performances. Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria presents a film on the figure of the itinerant musician, projected inside the pavilion. These explorations of continuity extend to a culinary program organized by Palestinian chef Fadi Kattan, which brings together food and drink from across the Arab world, spotlighting chefs working at the intersection of conservation and evolution, while tracing the cross-cultural impact of migration and trade.
In the Moroccan Pavilion, however, Amina Agueznay weaves together stories, gestures and human relationships in forms that activate memoryspace and time. For over twenty years he has worked closely with Moroccan vernacular practices, collaborating with local artisans and communities. Conceived as processes of transmission and transformation, his works allow materials to speak while maintaining an intimate relationship with their places of origin. More than a craft, it is a feminine rite of creation in which the woven form is understood as a living being, accompanied by rituals that mark its cycles of becoming. Located in the Artillery Hall, in the heart of the Arsenale, As a unfolds like a living membrane, a second skin that extends into space, peeling away to reveal layers of time. This suspended architecture opens a reflection on the concept of threshold: a space neither internal nor external, but inhabited, crossed and activated. Resonating with the Moroccan concept of atba, the installation addresses the threshold as a passage area between worlds: private and public, visible and invisible, where memory, ritual and gesture converge.
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