As the Qatar-Indonesia Year of Culture, 2023 was marked by a series of cultural events, one of which was the exhibition Growing Kopi, Drinking Qahwa: Stories of Coffee in Qatar and Indonesia (7 October 2023–17 February 2024), hosted in the temporary exhibition space at the National Museum of Qatar.
The show explored the history of coffee growing, the coffee trade and the drink itself around the world, with a specific focus on the traditional and contemporary coffee cultures of Qatar and Indonesia. Interactive screens, immersive projections, smellscapes and soundscapes, plus a contemporary work of art conceived specially for the occasion, were the devices chosen to convey all of these themes.
Organised around five distinct sections, the installation design was not so much conditioned by the need to protect the exhibits but by the imperative of providing an overview of an extremely extensive historical and geographical context, and simultaneously establishing a dialogue between the cultural and economic situations of two specific countries. This translated into a broad array of graphic, photographic and audiovisual resources, museographic elements of varying types and materials (from lightweight tubular panels to heavy drapery), and the use of traditional illuminated signs to identify different coffee-serving venues.
In this project, Empty made the shop drawings for the production of the exhibition elements and the infrastructure for audiovisual productions. It also produced a vast number of mounts and plinths for the exhibits, the self-supporting structure in the second section (made out of steel modules and clad with large drapes), and the self-supporting spiral structure for the fifth section (made out of expanded polystyrene and covered with sack cloth).
