Bouthayna Al Muftah

Biography

In June 2022 the official poster of the FIFA World Cup was unveiled at Hamad International Airport in Doha. On the main sheet a ghutra, the traditional Qatari headdress, is thrown into the air. The poster's author, Bouthayna Al Muftah, had by then been working professionally for twelve years, since her graduation from university.

Eight posters were made for the tournament in all.

She was born in Qatar in 1987. She studied at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) and received a Bachelor of Arts in 2010. After graduating she turned to printmaking, typography and drawing, and also made mixed-media installations. Black ink became her recognisable material: it appears in nearly all her work. Her first notable public appearance dates from 2014. Her work was included in the group exhibition “Here, There” at the Al Riwaq gallery of Qatar Museums; the piece was called “Um Alsalsil Will Thahab”, that is, “Mother of Chains and Gold”. In 2017 she created the series “Yeebhom” (“Bring Them Back”), conceived as an archive of the history of her people: form, colour and texture were meant to convey the state of desire. In the same year her work took part in the group exhibition “Currents” at W Doha and in the showing “Contemporary Art Qatar” in Berlin. Later, based on the series “Bring Them Back”, a woven wall hanging was made at the Cité internationale de la Tapisserie in Aubusson (France) and presented at a ceremony in June 2022. In 2018 her exhibition “Echoes” was held at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. In November 2019 she showed work in the project “40 Minus Volume 7 Part 2” together with Mubarak Nasser Al Thani; both artists addressed the effect of the internet and social media on society. In January 2020 her pieces from the Mathaf collection were part of the Qatar Museums spring programme “Lived Forward: Art and Culture in Doha from 1960-2020”. In the summer of 2020 she was among thirty artists from the region whose work was shown in the exhibition “Our World Is Burning” at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.

In November 2022 her solo exhibition “Anassir” (“Elements”) opened at M7. In the summer of that year the World Cup poster was presented at the Design Museum in London, in the exhibition “Football: Designing the Beautiful Game”; the official ambassador of the tournament, David Beckham, attended the unveiling. In July 2022 Fashion Trust Arabia announced that she would work with the designer Yasmin Mansour on a sustainable fashion project.