Memes in a museum

Now Internet culture finds its place as art

- VAISHALI DAR

For long, memes have been dismissed as fleeting jokes or humorous fragments of digital life. Yet they have also mirrored our collective psyche, politics, and emotions with uncanny precision. Now, memes have entered the gallery space as objects of serious artistic and cultural reflection.

At the Media Majlis Museum at Northwestern University in Qatar (NU-Q), the first university museum in the Arab world dedicated to exploring journalism, communication, and media, this transformation takes center stage in an exhibition, 'Memememememe', on view until December 4.

Curated by Jack Thomas Taylor and Amal Zeyad Ali, the show gathers artists from Qatar, the region, and beyond to highlight how memes serve as cultural barometers, emotional shorthand, and tools of political commentary. Organized around four themes such as mass, length, time, and volume, the exhibition examines how memes spread and measure our collective thought.