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What is an astrolabe? Can karak tea reveal a deeper tale of cultural connection? How has digital media affected how we remember?
These were among the questions explored by senior students at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) and presented online for the VCUarts Qatar 2026 Graduation Showcase marking the culmination of their journey from foundational coursework to creative and critical execution.
Now live online, the exhibition features work by students from five programs at VCUarts Qatar: Art History (ARTH), Graphic Design (GDES), Interior Design (IDES), Painting and Printmaking (PAPR), and Master of Fine Arts in Design (MFA).
GDES student Khawla Al-Essa’s The Astrolabe: Taker of the Stars offers readers an immersive learning experience through a printed artist book. Using handcrafted production and sequential illustration, Al-Essa examines the astronomical instrument’s cultural development, anatomy, and functions.
“The more I researched, the more I understood how and why astrolabes gradually fell out of use. Reflecting on that, the key goal of my thesis is to reintroduce the astrolabe, presenting its functionality in an accessible and engaging way that fits contemporary audiences,” she explained.
To realize her vision, Al-Essa applied techniques from courses such as Kitchen Comics, which taught sequential art and storytelling, and Book Arts, which introduced her to bookbinding and paper engineering.
Following graduation, Al-Essa plans to pursue her passion for storytelling, and digital art and publication design. At the heart of her passions, she’s keen to explore community-oriented opportunities.
Of her experience at VCUarts Qatar, she said: “Over the past four years, I have worked closely with local institutions. These experiences built my confidence and practical skills and allowed me to grow as a designer and artist.
Another project by ARTH student Nourhane Tarroun, titled Karak Routes, also looks back in time to find meaning in Qatar’s most popular drink. Her research traces the popular beverage’s origins to Indian Ocean spice trade routes and 20th-century South Asian migration to the Gulf. She uses small takeaway cups collected across Qatar to show how daily objects move through time, and ultimately through history, and the stories they carry.
“Karak tea is everywhere in Doha, yet I had never really questioned how it got here or why it’s so popular. Looking at it through an art history lens allowed me to trace the connections between past and present that are all around us in everyday life,” she added.
Tarroun’s coursework helped her perceive objects not as “isolated” items, but as part of larger narratives.
“What feels local is actually shaped by movement and exchange. This project makes those connections visible and shows how everyday practices can hold layered, global histories,” she said.
In her project, Afkarna (Our Ideas), IDES student, Reema Al Mohannadi, reimagined space as a cohesive hub for collaboration, production, and exchange that supports emerging designers navigating uncertainty.
“As a graduating design student, there’s always uncertainty surrounding what you’re going to do after graduation—especially now with the threat that AI has posed to the design industry in general. That shift from a structured academic environment into a professional world that feels much less accessible,” she said.
In response to that gap, she adopted vernacular door geometries to design Afkarna as a network of pathways and used thresholds to symbolize a bridge, creating continuity between education and professional practice.
“The project is designed as a transitional space, not just physically, but conceptually, where emerging designers can continue to grow, experiment, and connect. Afkarna becomes that threshold—a space that doesn’t mark an end, but rather supports the beginning of a professional journey no matter what challenges we may face,” she explained.
Al Mohannadi said that her VCUarts Qatar education emphasized a process of refinement and iteration, helping her rethink how individual spaces connect and support one another.
“Instead of designing separate functions, I started to see the project as a network of interactions, where making, exhibiting, learning, and socializing are all interconnected.”
As the students prepare for what comes next amid challenging times, themes of mental health and emotional well-being also inspired one of the senior projects.
In Sparklers, PAPR student Tarishah Ramanda Fadilah uses a series of illustrations and frame-by-frame animations of sparks to symbolize feelings of anxiety and numbness.
“While I was experiencing these emotions, I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what I was truly feeling at that time,” she said about how the idea presented itself.
“I first sketched out the feelings. Like sparklers, they are small bursts, inconsistent in intensity,” she said. “But although they are small, they linger for a long time. They may even seem insignificant on their own, but they can build up and become suffocating and overwhelming.”
Fadilah drew on her own culture to bring the idea alive. She said, “The sparklers also represent the contrast between danger and joy, especially in childhood. In Indonesia, many children grow up playing with sparklers and fireworks, finding happiness in them despite the risks. That same contradiction is reflected here: even when these sparks feel dangerous, there’s still joy in those moments.”
Asked what she hoped viewers would take away from her work, Fadilah said she wanted to shed light on these emotions that are often invalidated as insignificant.
“I know that a lot of people experience anxiety and numbness. To those people, I want my work to be able to relate to them, to make them feel seen, and hopefully convey to them that these emotions, like sparklers, may be intense, but they don’t last forever. It is possible to find joy within these negative emotions.”
Moving from emotional insight to digital memory, MFA student Alice Mohammed Aslem’s, Between the Veins, emerged from what she describes as a “simple yet unsettling moment” while scrolling through her son’s photos on her phone.
“When I accidentally zoomed out, all these pictures, literally hundreds of them, collapsed into a dense grid where I could no longer distinguish his face or the moments I had carefully documented. I began to question whether documenting everything actually weakens our ability to remember meaningfully,” she explained.
This reflection led Aslem to create a physical connection to these digital moments. She used weaving to transfer images onto screw pine and palm leaves, drawing on childhood memories in India and paying homage to Qatar, where she was born and raised.
“Bringing these two materials together became a way of holding both parts of my life in one piece. It’s also about my son. It reflects my identity to him. A way for him to understand where I come from, and in some way, understand his own roots through that,” she said.
Aslem hopes her work can start a conversation about digital and physical memory and encourage people to question how they are documenting their lives: “Are we actually remembering these moments, or just collecting them?” she reflected. “I hope that my work inspires people to question how we think about memory.”
Collectively, the projects reflect how the students’ combined technical skill, thoughtful introspection and curiosity address timely themes through research, art, and design. The 2026 VCUarts Graduation Showcase featuring the work of 67 VCUarts Qatar graduates is now available for viewing at portfolio.qatar.vcu.edu.