Attending the vernissage for RosTA in person both shocked and soothed, the show resembling a highly consumable piece of mass media, read hesitantly after we removed our masks in the early autumn sun. Hard and steely like the Soviet hammer and sickle, RosTA served danger, sex, agitprop; the denouement, gratis galette, and Nero d’Avola.

Over 30 artists focus their attention on human crises in the Arab world and the global ecological emergency at large, while the exhibition itself sparks outrage for its partnership with the Qatari-state-run MATHAF: the Arab Museum of Modern Art.