In Doha, the work by Damien Hirst that remained covered for five years and now gives its name to a neighborhood

Qatar's capital boasts architecture from major brands, vying with one another on its skyscraper-lined coastline and some grandiose museums, and also boasts the public art scattered throughout Doha and its outskirts. From Richard Serra's monoliths to the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson's collection, in the white stone deserts and urban spaces, the country continues to offer a canon of Western art—always blue chip, never emerging—for these more than two decades of the 21st century. Among all these works, one artist sparked a torrent of rejection in 2013: Damien Hirst 's "The Miraculous Journey."

All these initiatives, as well as the major exhibition of Latin American modernism with the Malba collection at the Qatar National Museum, are thanks to Sheika Al Mayassa bin Khalifa Al Thani, president of the Qatar Museums Authority and sister of Emir Tamim, a benefactor and lynchpin of Qatari culture. In fact, the country will finally have its national pavilion at the Venice Biennale , in the select Giardini section.

The British artist, however, was met with disappointment. Hirst, whose compulsion to scandal as a promotional strategy has diminished critical respect for his work, reached his own limit in Doha, almost continuing his series of sectioned animals eternalized in formaldehyde in bronze. It took years to quell that controversy. Now those city blocks are known as the "Baby Quarter."

Hirst's work is far from the tourist circuit and, therefore, off the radar of Westerners. "The Miraculous Journey" consists of 14 colossal bronze sculptures, arranged along a length of about 100 meters and mounted on a linear pool, opposite the Sidra Medical Center, a maternity and pediatric center also of enormous stature, on the outskirts of Doha. The work is conceived—in fact, conception—with the language of an anatomical atlas and X-rays. It therefore transcends the slippery question of taste: "grotesque," "crude," and "cynical" were some of the adjectives I heard European historians and curators use to describe it. It portrays, at the limits of what is accepted as "representable," the intrauterine life and evolution of the embryo. The execution and its literality equally confront, albeit for opposite reasons, Islamic culture and Western judgment. Perhaps its most interesting aspect is the taboos it violates.

Let's take it step by step. An egg, a sperm, and life is created. Cascading cell multiplication: so far, geometric art, an allusion to life without specifying the species . But is it necessary to represent the uterus, the fallopian tubes, the placenta and umbilical cord, and that larva that we all once were? The second question is: why not? The sculptures were placed in 2013, before the Sidra Maternity Hospital had even opened.

The backlash erupted on social media in the country, for reasons exactly the opposite of those it would have denounced in the West. In the US and Latin America , it was reportedly criticized for reducing women to fertility and the reproductive mission, and we would have interpreted it as a pro-natalist campaign, against women's sexual rights. Of course, abortion is prohibited in Qatar; the country actively promotes high birth rates among Qatari citizens , who make up barely 15% of the population. In Doha, however, various voices and NGOs considered the work to violate the principles of Islam , which condemns the representation of the human figure, although not in all cases. The Qatar Museums Authority had to cover the pieces with covers, arguing that this was to "protect them while the renovation work continues" at the Medical Center. The 14 pieces of "The Miraculous Journey" remained covered for five years .

One of the constants of this millennium, whether in Buenos Aires, Doha, or Berlin, is the collective reaction to changes—or unwanted continuities—in public space; in the US and Latin America, the reaction is often vandalized. The toppling of statues is almost the manifesto of every major change in order . In France, Anish Kapoor's "Dirty Corner," the enormous vagina installed in the Gardens of Versailles in 2015, was also vandalized by conservative groups, while in Qatar, Serra's abstract monoliths in the desert were spray-painted; the vandals were prosecuted and made to pay for the restoration.

To what extent does "The Miraculous Journey" contradict Islamic principles? The sculptures' detractors started a hashtag on Twitter (in Arabic, #No_sculptures_in_Qatar). The main argument was that the sculptures imitate Western art and, above all, that representation should not compete with what is strictly a divine prerogative : that of giving life. In short, they were seen as disrespectful of Islamic beliefs. However, there is one point where Islam and secularism coincide: despite all the pornography that permeates and drives both consumption and the audiovisual industry—and despite the existence of an ad hoc narrative genre, gore or splatter cinema—a form of modesty that restricts pregnancy and viscera persists.

Specifically, the Quran prohibits idol worship , and therefore, human representation in contexts of religious introspection. But scholars soon came forward to clarify that what is considered an idol is linked to the context. Sheikh Mahmoud Anani Nafee, an expert in Islamic studies, observed that in Sharia law, the prohibition applies to the human figure in mosques, as it distracts from the worship of Allah, but that the context of Hirst's work is scientific and pedagogical. Although there is no unified Islamic perspective on representation—Islam traverses very diverse and geographically separated cultures—the interpretation of what is considered idolatry is always the first temptation for conservatives.

According to a report in The New York Times , the ensemble cost $20 million. On his website, Hirst defended his work as depicting “an extraordinary process” “greater than anything else” in the life of any human being. Sheikha Al Mayassa Al-Thani used the same line: “The miraculous journey” does not contradict Islam, as the Quran refers to the “miracle of birth.” Some emphasized that the pieces align completely with the purpose of the Sidra Medical Center, while other defenders questioned how so many people could reject the very process that “brought them to life.”

Faced with the ultraconservative onslaught, with its undercurrent of explicit politics in a monarchy, the authorities conducted public surveys about Hirst's sculpture group and the other public art pieces that define the city, becoming cardinal landmarks. Once the Sidra Medical Center was completed in October 2018, the covers were removed, and "The Miraculous Journey" was exposed, somehow fulfilling its purpose. A year and a half later, the quarantine silenced the debates. Today, this area of ​​the city is known as "Babytown."