Sharjah’s Barjeel Art Foundation makes a dramatic debut in Kuwait

It’s a Sunday evening in the industrial district of Shuwaikh, Kuwait’s answer to Dubai’s Al Quoz, and stylish patrons are steadily trickling into Life Center. It is a low-key mall, except on the second floor is one of Kuwait’s leading art spaces: Contemporary Art Platform Kuwait.

It’s the opening night for two new exhibitions. In the main space, the Barjeel Art Foundation from Sharjah presents Al Seef, an exhibition of works from the personal collection of founder Sheikh Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, and in the secondary space is The Replacement by the Iraqi artist Mahmoud Obaidi, who showed the exhibition in Dubai’s Meem Gallery last year.

It is Barjeel’s debut exhibition in Kuwait and almost 200 people are at the opening, which, according to local art enthusiasts, is an unprecedented number.

But numbers aside, the quality of the artwork speaks for itself.

Al Seef, a colloquial Arabic term meaning water’s edge, explores periods in history where proximity to water has either shaped or played a significant role in the development of a place: the establishment of folklore traditions on the Nile; the building of the Aswan High Dam and its implications; political confrontations on the banks of the Tigris; movement of Tangier’s inhabitants through the Strait of Gibraltar; and transformation of coastal landscapes in the Gulf.

Upon entering the surprisingly large space, the first work the viewer is drawn to is Adam Henein’s 1969 bronze statue Marie Nilus. This minimalist sculpture poetically weaves together two tales of creation: the ancient Egyptian legend that says all life stemmed from the River Nile and the narrative of Jesus’s mother Mary.

“Both stories denote motherhood and giving birth,” says Suheyla Takesh, the show’s curator. “In this one sculpture, which has a human form but fin-like protrusions on the back, Henein interweaves culturally and historically significant references to Egypt and universal themes.”

Original article by Anna Seaman

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Sharjah’s Barjeel Art Foundation makes a dramatic debut in Kuwait