#kuwaiti art

[neshamama]

thuraya al-baqsami, "detachment," 1984, tempera and colored pencil on paper

[neshamama]

thuraya al-baqsami, "the captain's daughter," 1989, acrylic on canvas

[neshamama]

thuraya al-baqsami, "the bride's room," 1986

[thunderstruck9]

Thuraya Al-Baqsami (Kuwaiti, b. 1952), Uncle Hassan, 1995. Acrylic on board, 50 x 40 cm.

[palominojacoby]

Anas AlOmain

[zemestoun]

Monira Al Qadiri - Wa Waila (Oh Torment)

“A surreal music video based on an old Kuwaiti folk song, whose words are almost like a trance of recurring tragedy and self-pity. It depicts love lost, displacement, gender identity, and death in a very visual, but also kitsch style. The men and women in the film are all in opposite roles, and the artist plays the part of the main male singer.”

[zemestoun]

Monira Al Qadiri - Father of Pearl

“42 almost invisible pearlescent silkscreen prints based on a painting the artist made from the only surviving photograph of her late grandfather. In the first half of the 20th century, he worked as a singer on a pearl diving boat in Kuwait, traveling around the Gulf and to Iran, India, and Africa. When seen from the eyes of today, this pre-oil world of sailing and pearl diving seems to reside in the realm of pure fiction, a detached and invisible world to the people of the region today, despite numerous efforts to revive it. This work describes the artist’s feeling towards this disappearing history, and her absolute inability to grasp or understand it.”

[zemestoun]

Monira Al Qadiri - Amorphous Solid Ghost

“The work is comprised of a series of oil drill heads made of iridescent Murano glass. The title Amorphous Solid takes its cue from the scientific name for frozen liquid sand – the actual material that glass is made of. Here, the meaning is conflated with the ever-changing methods of wealth production and energy generation, and the cultural legacy that they both helped found. The work attempts to conjure the premonition that fossil fuels will soon become obsolete as an energy source, and pre-emptively positions oil drilling as an inexplicable human activity from ancient times.”