ART
Work by Tunisian artist Nja Mahdaoui will be on sale at ArtBahrain
BRIDGING THE GULF
Artists in Bahrain have been largely overlooked until now. A new art fair aims to get them international recognition BY TAHIRA YAQOOB
n Mohammed al Mahdi’s tongue-in-cheek take on The Last Supper, Batman is bathed in a celestial light as he presides over a motley crew of superheroes around the dining table. The artist’s sometimes sinister caped crusaders, ninja turtles and Snow Whites are executed in a childlike scrawl on canvas with an urgency that conveys “the wish of a child that has more faith in his imaginary world than the limiting real world that surrounds him”. His Superheroes exhibition in Bahrain’s Al Riwaq Art Space replaces Vantage, a show in which the artist Waheeda Malallah probed issues of womanhood and dowry with images of trays piled high with dinars, adorned with a single symbolic red flower.
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JULY / AUGUST 2015
This is pretty controversial stuff in a nation not usually known for welcoming subversion. And it’s all with the government’s approval. The artworks are part of a growing movement within Bahrain by artists who are struggling to articulate changes happening within their country and culture. Anti-government protests are still straggling on after four years of unrest in which dissenters are swiftly dealt with. In May this year, Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, was jailed for six months for posts on his Twitter account. Regular clashes and occasional outbreaks of violence, even if they simply mean roads being closed off and traffic chaos at weekends, seem to have become a part of Bahraini life.