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A traverse into the twilight zone and a journey into the self are at the centre of Bahraini artist Zayn Qahtani’s first-ever solo exhibition, now open in London.
The Angels in Purgatory exhibition, which opened on January 19 at the Vitrine art gallery in London’s Fitzrovia neighbourhood, features eight works, integrating drawing and sculpture across an array of materials including natural pigments, watercolour and coloured pencil, found objects and bio-plastics.
At the core of the exhibition’s concept are the Nephilim – a mythical race of angels found in the Hebrew editions of the Bible, who were cast out of paradise for “disobedient behaviour,” and doomed to travel the Earth amongst humans, according to Zayn.
“Angels in Purgatory follows the episodic, autobiography of a fictitious character ‘the Self’ based on the Nephilim, making a pilgrimage through the purgatory of the mind,” she told GulfWeekly.
“The Nephilim are used as a storytelling tool to narrate flashes from my own life, or memories. Tales of yearning, loss, freedom, and celebration all exist within the show.”
For example, in the diptych I am the You in Me (I Beg You to Set Me Free), Zayn explores the self and the ‘anti-self’, dissecting the parts that we show the world and the parts hidden away – emphasising that neither is better than the other.
Drinking from the Starpool, on the other hand, was inspired by “moments of sudden clarity, where the universe opens up just the tiniest bit and a spark of illumination is born in the Self.”
And in Familiar Waters, the 25-year-old artist explores the idea and comfort around crying in a graphite and colour pencil drawing on Bahraini date palm paper.
“I am always fascinated by the concept of crying - as a coping and healing mechanism, as frustration, as catharsis,” she added.
“Familiar Waters is an exploration of this fascination, trying to capture an act so fleeting, and usually quite hidden from the public eye, to make it a visible, tangible, normalised thing.”
While many artists focus on the canvas or paper artwork, only paying heed to the framing of the piece come exhibition time, Zayn sees frames and drawings or paintings as whole objects.
Each of her pieces has been carefully framed, with the frame telling their own part of the story.
“The frames act as symbols of the conscious mind - these rigid, metallic barriers and defence mechanisms we place unto ourselves - and slowly journeying inwards into the subconscious, which is represented by the abalone borders and the central drawing,” she added.
“The frames I create are part of the narrative of the drawing itself - one could not exist without the other.”
Although this is Zayn’s first solo exhibition, the London-based multidisciplinary artist has previously exhibited in New York City (USA), Dubai (UAE), Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) and Kuwait.
She recently completed The Drawing Intensive at The Royal Drawing School in London, and holds a Bachelors of Arts in Fashion Design from The Royal University for Women, Bahrain.
In 2021, she won the honorary grant and was selected to exhibit at the ATHR Gallery in AlUla, Saudi Arabia. As an artist, she creates between the realms of what is seen and what is felt, compiling a personal mythology along the way.
She continues to draw on inspirations from ancient cultures, as well as nature’s diverse ecosystems to create pieces that are too distorted to be real, yet too familiar to be a dream.
Angels in Purgatory is on display at the Vitrine Art Gallery from Wednesday to Saturday until April 8.
For more details, follow
@zaynqahtani on Instagram.
