In the second half of the 20th century, during a time of nation-building when cultural infrastructure was limited, the Gulf region was home to a small yet dedicated community of female visual artists. Through their art, they documented their architectural surroundings, local customs, social and women’s issues, as well as political events that shaped the region.
Even though they were artistically active, from the 1970s and 1980s onwards, a lot of their stories have been overlooked. But over recent years, things have changed, thanks to the rise of social media, art exhibitions and publications that are paying tribute to their notable creative output. This has allowed for their art to be once again appreciated by the current young generation of Arab art enthusiasts.
In honour of Women’s History Month, we look back on the trajectories of four artists from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – from women of firsts to those who were engaged in political activism.
In 1968, the Makkah-born, Saudi painter and graphic designer Mounirah Mosly became one of the first women to show her art to the public in the Saudi kingdom, specifically at the Dar Al-Tarbiya Girls School in Jeddah. She was only a teenager. Another woman who was also showcasing her work in the same location was her colleague, the Saudi artist Safeya Binzagr. After studying in Cairo and Oregon, Mosly worked as a specialist in publication design at Saudi Aramco, opened an art gallery, and established a youth art competition. Her paintings, covering the themes of nature, figuration, daily life, cultural memory and more, have been collected around the Arab region, by the likes of Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah) and Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts (Amman).
Born in Old Dubai, the Emirati artist Najat Makki sought to live a life of creativity, independence and determination from an early age. In the late 1970s, under the sponsorship of the UAE government, she travelled to Cairo to study art. She received degrees in relief carving, plastic arts, and ancient Egyptian art. In the 1990s, she gained a doctorate degree in art philosophy – making her the first Emirati artist to earn a PhD degree in art. Upon her return to the UAE, Makki joined the Emirates Fine Art Society and experimented with a wide array of materials, including metals, textiles and henna. Her vibrant works feature motifs of nature, women, as well as war, as seen in her 1987 painting “Aftermath of War,” painted during the Iran-Iraq War. Makki still lives in Dubai, where she continues to exhibit her work in a number of venues and events, including Aisha Alabbar Gallery, Abu Dhabi Art, Dubai Light Art Festival, and Cultural Foundation Abu Dhabi.
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Born and raised in Kuwait, at a time when the country was culturally open and advanced in the 1960s, the artist and writer Thuraya Al-Baqsami is a tour de force, whose career has lasted for more than five decades. Over the course of her illustrious career, Al-Baqsami, who studied art in Cairo and Moscow, has experimented with painting, printmaking, and engraving. Her mostly figurative artworks are bold, full of colour and life, where the female figure is almost always present in her strength and beauty. Al-Baqsami is mostly remembered for her powerful images created during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in the early 1990s. She stayed behind in her country and risked her safety by producing protest art – most notably her blue-and-white print that simply read in Arabic: “No to the Occupation”. Aside from participating in regional and international exhibitions, as well as being a member of the Kuwait Arts Association, her artworks have entered the collections of the British Museum (London), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Tehran), the Museum of Human Rights (Geneva) and UNESCO (Paris).
Earlier this year, the Saudi artist Safeya Binzagr made headlines when her 1960s painting “Coffee Shop in Madina Road” was sold for more than $2 million at Sotheby’s – a record amount for Saudi art. Originally from Jeddah, Binzagr devoted her life and career to creating art, making her one of the kingdom's earliest pioneers. During her formative years, she travelled to Egypt and the United Kingdom to pursue her studies. In Saudi Arabia, she held her first exhibition in 1968 with Mounirah Mosly, turning them into the first women to show their works in public. In her gentle paintings, Binzagr depicted the architecture, rituals, people and traditional costumes of Saudi society. An independent woman, she was also known for being a devoted educator, establishing her namesake cultural centre in Jeddah in 1995, offering, until this day, arts education for all.
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