‘Inscribing a Life’ brings artworks together from across the QAGOMA Collection that register existence, histories and time through the act of mark‑making. From the brute force recorded in a painting on canvas – expressing strength and vitality – to the commitment of time captured in the repetition involved in making intricate forms, works in this exhibition champion the desire to imprint and share expressions of being.

‘Inscribing a Life’ and the adjacent display ‘Archie Moore: kith and kin’ share themes of memorialisation and time. Alongside artworks expressing the intensity and wonder of existence are those celebrating and solemnly honouring lives that have come to an end. Some reflect on how historic trauma and grief is recorded within the body, while others speak to the importance of acknowledging loss and how public memorials, through observing death, reaffirm the social fabric for the living.

The importance of thinking beyond the human lifespan can be seen in expressions of the cosmos and images that refer to the divine. ‘Inscribing a Life’ features artworks that grapple with the vast scale and deep time of the universe. Spiritual life is represented in manifold ways, from spiritual beings manifesting as everyday forms, to holy objects as tangible connections to worlds beyond the earthly, to abstract works that grapple with the impossibility of representing the expansiveness and perfection of the divine.