Date & Time: Wednesday, 06th May, at 7 pm
- Guided Exhibition Tour Lead: Isabella Rossen, Countryside Head of Programs, NMoQ
- Speaker: Dr Guillaume-Augustin de Vaulx, philosophy researcher
Venue: QPS/ Countryside exhibition’s courtyard
Location & Map: Rawdat Al-Khail Street, B Ring Rd – Link
Synopsis:
|
This month our talk will be held in the courtyard of QPS, the site of NMoQ’s “Countryside: A Place to Live, Not to Leave” exhibition. Our group will be given a guided tour by Ms. Isabella Rossen through the exhibition rooms spanning the agricultural and environmental heritage of Qatar, followed by the talk of Dr. Guillaume-Augustin de Vaulx in these same topics.
|
Exhibition description:
Qatar Museums (QM), in collaboration with AMO led by Samir Bantal and Rem Koolhaas – presents Countryside: A Place to Live, Not to Leave, a groundbreaking exhibition that reimagines the rural landscape as a space for sustainability, innovation, and future living.
Spanning a geographic arc from Africa through the Middle East and Central Asia to China, Countryside highlights a region deeply connected by history and still home to a majority of the world’s population. Through immersive installations, critical research, and storytelling, the exhibition challenges the dominant urban narrative and invites visitors to explore how rural life can offer more humane and ecological answers to today’s global crises.
Synopsis of the talk:
After a philosophical introduction defining agriculture, Dr. Guillaume will address its challenges in the Qatari natural conditions and historically explain how agriculture expanded, covering four periods: before the 20th century and the prevalence of al-Ahsa’ oasis; the scattered agricultural projects before 1970; the foundation of the agricultural system in the 1970s; and the food security turn after 2017. With the limits of such a model detailed in Christian Henderson’s decisive book (2026), in the last part of the talk, Dr. Guillaume will propose a holistic agricultural system tailored to Qatar’s specific conditions.
Exhibition Tour Lead’s Bio
Isabella Rossen is a sociologist, researcher and developer of programs, specialized in urban development, with skills and work experience in reporting on the interaction between people and their built environment, focusing on the relationship between architecture, heritage, and public space. She is experienced in developing and executing programs and public events that connect scientists, policymakers, designers and artists, such as the pre-launch of OMA’s Countryside exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum and more recently the Opening Symposium of the Countryside exhibition in Qatar. Besides working for QM as Head of Programs, she is curator of the Experimental Labs workshop “Grafting Al Asmakh” that took place at Liwan Design Studios and Labs in January 2026.
Speaker’s Bio
Dr. Guillaume is trained in philosophy, Islamic studies, and biology. He received his PhD in classical Arabic philosophy, and his dissertation was on an encyclopaedia of the 9th century: the Epistles of the Brethren in Purity. He has worked as a philosophy teacher, a researcher in Islamic studies, and a manager of agroecological projects (national director of the NGO A Rocha Lebanon for Environment, and head of agriculture at Heenat Salma Farm in Qatar). Dr. Guillaume has authored 7 books, with two more slated to be published in the Summer of 2026: “Cosmic and Animal Piety in Islam” related to the history of representations, and a philosophy book titled “What is Agriculture?”
