“My grandmother came here in the 1960s with the sole purpose of supporting her children, but there’s almost no visual trace of her life here. That absence is what Store-Away seeks to address, not just for her, but for every expatriate who shaped Qatar’s story without leaving a footprint in its archives,” says Natasha Fernandes.
Natasha Fernandes, a graphic designer and VCUarts Qatar alumna, unveiled her poignant public art installation “Store-Away” this week at Liwan’s Open Day.
Running for six months beginning February 3, the photography-driven project highlights the fading visual heritage of Qatar’s early South Asian diasporic communities through their rapidly disappearing storefront signage, a tactile yet often overlooked thread in the nation’s historical fabric– something tangible yet often under-appreciated remnants of history slipping quietly into the past.
Fernandes’ inspiration emerged from a deeply personal void. Researching her grandmother’s life, a woman who arrived in Doha decades ago among waves of mid-20th century expatriates. She found scant visual records of those who, like her, had disappeared from the visual memory of the city.
By the 1970s, expatriates constituted over 60% of Qatar’s population, yet their lived experiences remained somewhat elusive from the mainstream historical narratives.
Store-Away bridges this gap by focusing on the vibrant, hand-painted shop signs that once filled bustling commercial districts, evoking a deep sense of nostalgia for a time now fading from view.
These functional designs, Fernandes explains, were “not about aesthetic branding but survival, a way to announce services, from laundries to salons, in a pre-digital era”.
In contrast to today’s polished, brand-driven typography, these signs were humble and practical, often crafted from templates brought over from India, Nepal, or Bangladesh—simple yet soulful echoes of a time when function held more weight than form, and every letter carried a piece of distant home.
Documenting these relics proved challenging. Fernandes navigated male-dominated spaces where her presence as a woman documentarian initially drew confusion.
Communication barriers compounded the issue, as many shop owners spoke the Hindi language, necessitating her father’s assistance as a translator.
Consent lingered just beyond reach like a fleeting shadow. Some subjects hesitated, unsure, unable to grasp that their everyday signage—once so ordinary, so familiar—held within it a quiet, enduring cultural significance, a piece of their own history woven into the fabric of the city.
“They’d ask, ‘Why photograph this old shop?’” Fernandes recalls.
Sometimes, an untruth is needed as the spark to melt the ice. To ease tensions, she framed the project as an academic endeavour, which eventually garnered cautious cooperation. A handful of owners even video-called relatives abroad mid-shoot, sharing glimpses of this unexpected recognition.
The installation features dozens of photographs capturing these vernacular designs, alongside audio snippets of shopkeepers’ stories.
Through Fernandes’ lens, these signs—often etched in bold Arabic-English hybrids or adorned with improvised, personal flourishes—emerge as silent yet powerful markers of identity for communities who rarely anticipated permanence.
“They came thinking they would stay briefly, but ended up shaping Doha’s urban landscape for 50 years,” she notes.
Yet as glass-and-steel developments replace old quarters, these visual echoes of migrant labour and enterprise face erasure.
While Fernandes acknowledges the inevitability of change, Store-Away argues for intentional archiving.
“This isn’t about freezing the past but preserving its fingerprints,” she insists.
In the delicate spaces between words and worlds, Store-Away captures more than just fading shop signs—it preserves the quiet resilience of communities who once arrived in Doha with little more than hope in their hands.
Fernandes’ lens glimpses the stories of lives lived in the margins, whose legacies are etched not in monuments or textbooks, but in the vibrant, hand-painted signs that once announced their presence to a city they helped shape.
As these signs slowly vanish beneath the weight of modernity, their stories remain, waiting to be remembered, not as fragments of the past, but as living threads woven into the very soul of Qatar.
This project is not just an archive; it is an act of love, a tribute to the untold histories that continue to pulse beneath the surface of the city, reminding us that even the most fleeting lives can leave enduring marks on the world around them.
The project has already sparked dialogue at Liwan, a hub for Qatari design innovation, with visitors reflecting on how transient lives can forge enduring legacies.
For Fernandes, the next step is scaling up: “I only captured a fraction. Imagine a national archive of these stories, proof that ‘temporary’ communities built foundations we still stand on.”
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