Featuring a cannon, a contemporary video installation, 18-century paintings and contemporary comic books, this exhibition, curated by Tom Eccles and Mark Rappolt explores history as the product of both fact and fiction, through a CGI-animation by Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen (b. 1976) and artefacts relating to the legend of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, one of the most famous and polarizing figures in South Asian history, across mediums and time.
Expanding on themes introduced by Ho’s two-channel video, One or Several Tigers, and anchored by the story of Tipu Sultan, the exhibition explores the creative potential of art and media as a means of storytelling and the shaping and reshaping of identity. Moreover as it explores the iconography of the tiger in relation to both South and Southeast Asian history, it questions the boundaries between fact and fiction, between coloniser and colonised, and looks at how the same story can be told and retold. In doing so, it challenges the idea that both history and art are about fixed and stable perspectives and conventional notions of centres and peripheries of power.

Tom Eccles comments about the work methodology and intention behind the exhibition, stating that “bringing together contemporary art with historical collections invigorates both. This exhibition demonstrates the depth of Qatar Museums’ collection and creates a lens through which to view how the past is always present.”

Led by Artistic Directors Tom Eccles and Mark Rappolt, Assistant Curator Jumanah Abbas, and Director of Rubaiyat Sheikha Alanood Hamad Al Thani, this emblematic exhibition forms part of the initial research for Rubaiyat Qatar. A major new project under Qatar Museums, Rubaiyat Qatar is a nationwide multidisciplinary quadrennial exhibition. Leading up to its inaugural edition in 2024 is a series of pop-up exhibitions and residencies that will introduce local communities to the themes and practices related to its inaugural 2024 exhibition.