There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a studio in the months before a show comes together. Sketches half-finished on the wall, a conversation with a mentor still working itself out in the back of the mind, a piece that will not be right until it has been pulled apart and rebuilt twice more. That quiet, extended over nine months and shared by twenty-five artists at once, is the premise Fire Station has built its Artists Intensive Study Programme around, and it is opening its doors again for 2027.
Fire Station, the contemporary art hub under Qatar Museums, has announced the open call for the second edition of the AISP, a fully funded, nine-month residency running from March to November 2027. It is aimed at emerging visual artists, from Qatar and from anywhere else in the world, between the ages of 18 and 35. Applications close on September 5, 2026.
What sets AISP apart from a standard residency is the density of what happens inside it. The program is led by Wael Shawky, the artist whose own work has moved between film, sculpture, and performance across major international platforms, and who serves as Fire Station's artistic director. Under his direction, the nine months combine studio-based practice with seminars, group critiques, and lectures from artists, curators, and theorists brought in from outside the region. The idea is not to hand participants a syllabus so much as to put them inside a working, argumentative community, one where a technical question in the studio might be answered by a conversation about theory the same afternoon.
"The Artists Intensive Study Programme is designed to create an environment where artists are encouraged to challenge their practice, exchange ideas across cultures, and develop new ways of thinking," Shawky said of the program. He described the goal as building a network of global cultural communities through a curriculum shaped by varied perspectives, one that pushes contemporary discourse beyond its usual Western reference points.
The jury reviewing this year's cohort reflects that ambition. It includes Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, chairperson of Qatar Museums, alongside Shawky, curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, Tom Eccles, Chus Martínez, artist Emily Jacir, Vincenzo de Bellis, Eugene Tan, and Her Highness Sheikha Hoor bint Sultan Al Qasimi. It is the kind of panel that signals how seriously Fire Station treats this cohort, not as students to be taught so much as practitioners to be sharpened.
Twenty-five artists, a mix of Qatari and international talent, will spend the program refining technical skills and pushing their conceptual work further, closing the experience with a final exhibition curated by Shawky himself. For international participants, the program covers flights, accommodation, and a living allowance for the full nine months. There are no tuition or application fees.
The inaugural edition of AISP set the template Fire Station is building on: a program less interested in credentialing artists than in giving them room, time, and serious critical company to work through what their practice is actually trying to do. For a region whose contemporary art infrastructure has grown quickly over the past decade, that kind of sustained, unhurried development matters as much as any single exhibition.
Applicants should be able to point to a clear, developing practice and a willingness to be challenged by it, alongside genuine interest in working inside a collaborative, interdisciplinary studio environment. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to interviews in October and November 2026, with accepted artists notified by mid-December.
Applications can be submitted at qmforms.qm.org.qa/form/AISP-2.
More information is available at firestation.org.qa or by writing to firestation@qm.org.qa.
