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Special Projects 2026

The Special Projects program brought together nine leading artists debuting ambitious, site-specific works that responded to Art Basel Qatar&rsquo;s inaugural theme, Becoming. Spanning sculpture, installation, performance, film, and architecture, these projects explored the environmental and social histories shaping contemporary life in the MENASA region and beyond. Unfolding across Msheireb Downtown Doha, the program offered bold perspectives and immersive interventions that reflected on transformation, identity, and the future.

Untitled Pending Self Portrait Looking For Pearls On A Phone Call (with some pink and green secrets) by Abraham Cruzvillegas
Abraham Cruzvillegas (b. 1968, Mexico City) presented one of his most ambitious large-scale iterations of his long-term work titled Untitled Pending Self Portrait Looking For Pearls On A Phone Call (with some pink and green secrets). Cruzvillegas&rsquo; interpretation of the word, meaning &lsquo;self-construction&rsquo;, refers to how scarcity breeds ingenuity, and how a philosophy of life can make something out of nothing, that is also a metaphor for identity and how we are constantly transforming ourselves.
Recycling only locally sourced materials, this sculpture was hanging in a space where people can &lsquo;read&rsquo; it as a large X shape, including all possible meanings and contradictions the sign itself can bring.

Sikkat Al Maiz Passage

Beckett's Chair Rotated by Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman (b. 1941, Fort Wayne, Indiana) is one of the most influential and provocative artists of the past half-century. Working across video, sculpture, performance, neon, installation, and sound, Nauman has consistently pushed the boundaries of artistic practice, exploring themes of perception, language, the body, and the psychology of space. For Art Basel Qatar, Nauman presented a new 3D video work Beckett&rsquo;s Chair Portrait Rotated that was projected at a massive scale, transforming the vast interior of M7&rsquo;s grand theatre into an enveloping field of light and motion.

M7 Theatre

Little Castles and Other Songs by Hassan Khan
Hassan Khan (b. 1975, lives and works in Berlin and Cairo) has premiered Little Castles and Other Songs, a live suite of his recent original songs performed on a customized digital system developed for this purpose by computer music designer and composer Olivier Pasquet. Written during a period of global turbulence, the project channels the material conditions and emotional register of a trembling, shifting world.
Hassan Khan performed a live concert as the closing act of the VIP opening night on February 3, 2026, in the Radwani House Courtyard.

Radwani House

Transition, among other things by Khalil Rabah
Khalil Rabah (b. 1961, Jerusalem) presented an iterative work titled Transition, among other things. The large-scale installation continues his long-standing engagement with institutional critique through an installation composed of reconfigured fragments drawn from domestic, institutional, and industrial contexts. By indexing and recomposing these displaced objects into sculptural architectures, the project interrogates the politics of space, environmental memory, and the shifting value of material remnants under occupation.

DDD Atrium

Ballad of a Woman by Nalini Malani
Nalini Malani (b. 1946, lives and works in Mumbai), who is known for creating work influenced by her experience of migration in the aftermath of the partition of India, presented Ballad of a Woman, a 5-minute single channel stop motion animation hand-drawn on iPad, as a large-scale outdoor projection on the M7 facade, transforming the heart of Msheireb with immersive, unrelenting imagery.

M7 Façade

A House Between Two Houses by Nour Jaouda
Nour Jaouda&rsquo;s (b. 1997, Tripoli, Libya) project constructs an imagined &ldquo;rest house&rdquo; structure rendered through intersecting steel walls, layered architectural drawings, and suspended textile fragments, forming a space shaped by emotional subjectivity, memory, and imagination rather than fixed geography. The installation embodies a process of continual becoming; its skeletal, scaffold-like form houses dyed textile glimpses of a forgotten landscape, dissolving boundaries between rural and urban, past and future, idea and material realization.

M7 Lobby

In the Assembly of Lovers: be a lamp, a lifeboat, a ladder by Sumayya Vally
Sumayya Vally (b. 1990, South Africa) presented In the Assembly of Lovers, a continuously transforming majlis that draws from historic public spaces across the Muslim world, from the Great Mosque of C&oacute;rdoba and the Church of the Nativity to Gaza&rsquo;s Omari Grand Mosque and Beirut&rsquo;s Martyr&rsquo;s Square, to reimagine how collective presence gives shape to architecture. Taking its title from a line attributed to the Iraqi mystic Rabia al Adawiyya, which calls on us to build again through being together, the installation shifts configuration throughout the fair to host gatherings and conversations, becoming a living monument to how we once gathered and how we might gather again.

Barahat Square

What Dreams May Come | أيُّ أحلامٍ قَدْ تأتي by Rayyane Tabet
Rayyane Tabet&rsquo;s (b.1983, Beirut, Lebanon) What Dreams May Come | َق ٍمالحأ ُيأ د ْ يتأت is an experiential pavilion that explores &ldquo;Becoming&rdquo; through the suspended, transformative space of dreaming, drawing from the humble gesture of resting beneath a palm tree. Formed by two intersecting circular structures clad in natural and artificial palm fronds, the immersive installation creates a shared sanctuary that reflects the Gulf&rsquo;s shifting cultural landscapes and invites visitors into a space of introspection and communal presence.

Mohammed Bin Jassim House

my tongue is a blade by Sweat Variant
Sweat Variant (Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born) describes the collaborative practice of Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born. Their project my tongue is a blade is a three-hour durational movement work in which four performers test the limits of attention and relational memory as they hold, bear, and sustain one another within a shifting visual and sonic landscape. Continuing the duo&rsquo;s exploration of embodied inheritance, the piece unfolds without a fixed end, inviting audiences to enter and exit freely.
They presented a performance piece during the VIP opening night on February 3, 2026, at Bin Jelmood House.

Bin Jelmood House

SONG by Jenny Holzer
SONG is a new site-responsive work by Jenny Holzer, commissioned by Art Basel Qatar for its inaugural edition and presented at the Museum of Islamic Art. Premiering during the Art Basel Qatar Welcome Party, the work had continued throughout the fair, from 2&ndash;7 February.
Presenting poems by Mahmoud Darwish, the celebrated and influential Palestinian poet whose lyrical voice has shaped modern Arabic literature, and Nujoom Alghanem, the acclaimed Emirati poet and filmmaker known for her intimate, incisive writing, Holzer brings Arabic and English text into public space as illumination, rhythm, and interruption. Moving between intimacy and monumentality, SONG joins architecture in a temporary field of light and language&mdash;a fleeting chorus of words across stone, air, and sky&mdash;inviting audiences to pause, read, and reflect together.
Light projection and drones Museum of Islamic Art, Doha &ldquo;How Far Is Far&rdquo; by Mahmoud Darwish. Used with permission, &copy; 2026 by the Mahmoud Darwish Foundation. &copy; 2026 Jenny Holzer, member Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Photo Courtesy by Art Basel

Museum of Islamic Art

Special Projects

Special Projects | ABQ26 post-show

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Intro

Abraham Cruzvillegas, Bruce Nauman, Hassan Khan

Rabah, Malani, Jaouda

Vally, Tabet, Variant

Jenny Holzer

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