REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA –-  By: Nabilla Lubay  

Art and Design is often seen as a sign of creative freedom and expressive visual communication. However is it worth the trouble to learn this liberating creative field in a middle eastern context?

Education is expensive and studying in an American university in Qatar is not cheap either. Qatar Foundation also known as Hamad Bin Khalifa University is a well known hub that foster world class education with universities that are the top in America. This famous campus full of Internationally well-known university becomes a symbol of prestige and aspiration to those who wishes to study at Qatar Foundation’s University. The university I studied is considered the number one public art school in the USA – Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond, Virginia.

I had the privilege to visit the home campus in the US a couple of times and also graduated from the Honors and school of the arts college at the main campus. However there is a slight difference in the study environment in Qatar in contrast to the US. For starters gender ratio; The US consider design as somewhat a masculine field but in Eastern thinking we see it as often a feminine pursuit and therefore there is a larger female student body in VCU Qatar than it is in the US. In fact in my batch consisting of around 60 students there is only 4 male student. As much as this number seems shocking it is not uncommon, the people in the middle east, much like most eastern thinking believe that as a male, pursuing the arts is often a risky gamble and not considered masculine.