The work acquired global recognition across borders and contexts—and notably gave its title to the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2024. In Doha, the project will take on a specific and meaningful form by incorporating the main languages spoken both within Qatar and by the diverse communities that converge there, as a transnational hub at the geographical point of encounter of various regions and continents. Each phrase will appear in a different language, illuminating the universal condition of being foreign, and questioning the very notion of belonging, identity, and national borders.

Works from the Foreigners Everywhere (2004-) series feature texts taken from quotidian conversations proliferating in the public sphere—their political significance often diminished through repetition. The text is an appropriation of an appropriation (a gesture typical of several of Claire Fontaine’s works) in that the phrase is taken from the name of a collective from Turin, Italy, who engaged in antiracist practice in the early 2000s. Moreover, this series displays a translation of the eponymous phrase in several languages; in its recent iteration at the 2024 Venice Bienniale it placed the phrase in more than twenty different languages alongside one another. This practice highlights the ethics of language and exclusions inherent in any process of translation. We can reflect upon the fact that the phrase “Foreigners Everywhere” does not have the same significance when displayed in Italy as it does in Doha. We bear witness to the heightened political charge of language in which context floods words with a supralinguistic meaning. Including wide-spoken alongside local dialects, the installation will highlight the cultural richness and diversity of Doha as a transnational bridge. Arabic, English, French, Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, Tagalog, will be put into dialogue with Urdu, Malayalam, Nepali, and more, as a necessary reminder in these times of turmoil that each and every one of us will always be a foreigner to another individual, and in this foreignness lies our universal and common trait.