Qatar Pavilion at South Korea's Gwangju Biennale highlights ancient rain prayers and climate change

Entering South Korea’s Gwangju Biennale for the first time, the Qatar Pavilion transports visitors away from the Kwangju Bank Art Hall to the sights and sounds of the Qatari desert with an audiovisual exhibition titled Knock, Rain, Knock.

Curated by the National Museum of Qatar, the pavilion is the only one from an Arab country at the event, which runs until December 1 and is the oldest contemporary art biennale in South Korea.

The works of seven Qatari and Qatar-based artists and designers dive into Arab and Islamic identity, history, water symbolism, and how humanity interacts with the planet.

The show explores the significance of rain in Qatari culture, using Salat Al Istisqaa’ – a prayer used to call for rain during droughts in Islam – as its starting point, bridging ancient tradition and culture with contemporary experience.

“We wanted to take people through a journey of the intended outcome when praying for rain,” co-curator Al-Shaima Ayoub tells The National. “We’re in South Korea introducing a concept that might be a bit foreign, but we also wanted to show that rain prayers take place in multiple cultures and religions.

“We wanted to present this cultural Islamic concept in a way that is more understandable, so simply taking viewers through the journey of praying, receiving and bearing what comes after, with an introduction to the landscape and context at the beginning. It's also about what we can take from tradition, ancestral knowledge and religious practice, to really shape how we deal with, respond to and protect the Earth.”

The exhibition is divided into four chapters, each stemming from the different stages of praying for rain, with one or two artworks helping the narrative unfold. The first chapter, titled Landscape, sets the scene, familiarising viewers with the Qatari desert and how vital rain is to the country.

Fatima Abbas’s Glimpse of Rain offers a stark comparison between a year of rainfall and a year of drought, with a diptych showing colour-coded squares representing weather data and its effect on the landscape every day of the year. Browns and beiges when in drought contrast with deep greens and yellows when a year with rain occurs.

In the To Pray chapter, the ritual of the rain prayer is put in focus. Sara Al Naimi’s Al Istigatha triptych of woodblock prints on linen draws on a 200-year-old poem by Nabati poet Mohsen bin Osman Al-Hazani, creating a visual representation of his ballad that describes praying for rain and how the world changes when it comes.

“I took parts of the poem that look at how people used to pray, act or celebrate before, during and after the drought,” Al Naimi says. “The first panel described how people are asking for rain from God, a symbol of prosperity, so the symbols shows a hand holding a dry tree.

“The next panel is after their prayers, when clouds gather and storms come, and rain finally falls. The poem speaks a lot about the physical change of the weather and uses the metaphor of lighting looking like flashing swords, so this is part of the illustration too. The final panel is about after the rain, when plants start to grow and flowers blossom, how animals are born in the spring and the cycle of life continues, thanks to the rain.”

Guillaume Rousere’s After the Rain, the sole work in the To Receive section, is a captivating immersive multisensory installation inviting visitors to experience Qatar’s landscape in the aftermath of rain.

A system drops drips of water into a shallow pool, creating tranquil ripples, where broken earthenware pottery lies. A soundscape of bird calls, call to prayer and the wind blowing can be heard, capturing how the sound of the place changes after rainfall.

“I go to the desert regularly and record audio,” Rousere tells The National. “This particular recording is from a specific quadrant I go to often and was recorded after it rained. It’s a spot where, when it rains, all the water flushes down and sits in this vale. The sediment gathers there, so there are lots of trees and the water stays there for a long time. There is also an agricultural settlement nearby.

“The installation features dripping water. It has this notion of tension and release, what we put in our ecosystem and how we use freshwater. The pots are jars used across the Middle East to hold water and they’re broken to reflect how all our systems are broken, needing irrigation systems, water tanks and pumps just to sustain water. It’s about the fragility of water and the urgency needed to do something about it.”

Lastly, To Bear contemplates how the earth bears the rain’s blessings and reflects on humanity's responsibilities as custodians. Abdulrahman Al Muftah’s Rain on Materiality consists of three large patinaed copper sheets, inspired by rain corroding metal billboards across the country.

Nada Elkharashi’s Al-Fag'a Oasis installation and video work, inspired by the seasonal hunting for desert truffle (fag’a in Arabic), looks at the journey of searching for and collecting rainwater in the desert. The conically-shaped installation includes a functional filtration system and acts as a beacon, signalling the presence of water.

“I take this notion of searching for the truffles and look at how it becomes a spiritual gain for those searching, and that community behaviour is what inspires the artwork,” Elkharashi says. “It’s also a functional piece, where the water that is harvested in the artwork is filtered through a system made from carbon rocks and bacteria, which purifies it, leaving drinkable water that people can take back home.

“The first layer is made out of a biomaterial, including fava beans and egg shells, and is intended to cover the entire surface of the work. The moment it rains, this material starts to disintegrate and become a food source for plants and animals like the Oryx. It acts as an alert system for people in the desert searching for water – they’ll be able to see the animals gathered around it, and a shiny silver layer underneath, and know that water has been harvested in it.”

The pavilion’s theme is a response to the biennale’s theme of Pansori – a 17th-century genre of musical storytelling, translating to ‘the noise of the public space’ – and is intended as a reflection on climate change, the Middle East’s growing scarcity of water and what can be learnt from looking back at simpler times.

Rain prayers are still practised in the region. The exhibition suggests that the knowledge needed to rethink water consumption and interactions with the planet has always been there but needs to be brought back into collective memory.