Inside Memememememe: The exhibition where memes meet the laundromat

Step into the Media Majlis Museum at Northwestern University in Qatar, and you’ll find a space designed to resemble a laundromat. It’s not a working laundry, nor a literal place to drop off clothes. Instead, the laundromat aesthetic forms a scenographic metaphor, framing how memes circulate, transform, and shape our digital lives.

Memememememe, running from now until 4 December 2025, encourages visitors to see memes as more than momentary entertainment - they are cultural barometers, reflecting and shaping collective consciousness.

Shahnawaz Zali, Manager of Integrated Marketing at Media Majlis, told The Kurator that the exhibition connects audiences to Northwestern Qatar’s mission by turning themes into interactive experiences. The team “actively connects communities to Northwestern Qatar’s mission by transforming exhibition themes into interactive experiences that advance evidence-based storytelling centred on the Global South.” Zali emphasises that the exhibition moves beyond surface humour, presenting memes as “cultural barometers that shape collective consciousness.” Visitors are invited to explore how memes “spread, evolve, and influence our shared digital realities - while reflecting on the social and political contexts that give them meaning.”

The laundromat metaphor drives the conceptual heart of the exhibition. Jack Thomas Taylor, Curator of Art, Media, and Technology, explains: “The concept of communication being ‘washed’ and narratives being ‘laundered’ was a key message for the exhibition.” He describes the laundromat as “something ubiquitous yet seemingly odd for a discussion about memes,” representing the unnoticed infrastructures that shape daily life. Taylor draws the parallel further: “Just as laundromats process our most intimate items through cycles of washing, drying, and folding, memes circulate through digital networks, undergoing endless transformations while maintaining recognizable traces of their origins.”

Taylor adds that this design “deliberately disarms the audience,” placing visitors in a space that feels familiar yet metaphorically charged. The scenography “doesn’t just illustrate meme circulation, it implicates the audience in recognising their own participation in these cycles of cultural processing, making them conscious of the infrastructure they typically ignore.”

The exhibition’s commissioned artworks expand on these themes. Taylor says the pieces were created in dialogue around the question: “How many memes have you seen today?” He explains that memes are “the foundational structure through which contemporary concepts - often subjects of daily contention - are debated, challenged, and archived.” The curatorial process was collaborative, “carefully negotiating what could be brought forth without compromising the communities from which these memes originate.” The resulting works examine how global platforms can flatten cultural nuance, commodify trauma, aestheticise solidarity, and profit from virality.

Audience engagement was a core part of the design. Taylor explains that the team “utilised several strategies to convey knowledge to a diverse audience,” guiding visitors through conceptual and thematic narratives while using metaphors to make complex ideas accessible. Domestic measurements - time, length, volume, mass - offer intuitive entry points while prompting deeper reflection. By framing memes as an ideological practice rather than mere entertainment, visitors are encouraged to consider “what they share, how they remix, whose voices they amplify, and whose suffering they may inadvertently aestheticise.” Taylor stresses that accessibility “does not necessitate simplification but rather requires pertinent entry points.”

Memememememe invites students, researchers, and casual digital users alike to interrogate their role within digital culture. Through the laundromat-inspired installation, its commissioned artworks, and layered curatorial approach, the exhibition asks pressing questions: whose voices are amplified? Whose experiences are flattened into consumable content? How does virality shape memory and identity?

By the end, the metaphorical laundromat leaves its mark: memes are no longer ephemeral jokes. They become evidence, argument, and mirror. Every share, remix, or like is a small act in a much larger conversation about identity, ethics, and collective consciousness - and the exhibition makes those invisible cycles suddenly visible.