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When award-winning Bahrain-based artist Giuse Maggi was growing up she had a number of painful run-ins with glass.
At three-years-old, she knocked over a milk bottle and was cut by the broken shards. A few years later, she ran headlong through a glass door believing it was open and shattered it in the process. At 17, another encounter with a door led to a piece of glass having to be surgically removed from her arm.
Far from being ill-fated the accidents produced an unlikely bond with the material. Today the Italian-born artist is one of the world's premier glass artists.
In 1999, her work was selected for the prestigious 'New Glass Review 20.'
The competition, organised by the Corning Museum of Glass in New York selects the100 most important glass art works from round the world every year. Her work is now in private collections from US to Japan.
As part of Bahrain's first Italian Cultural Festival opening today, an exhibition of Giuse's work called 'Orizzonti - Skylines' will be displayed at the Art Centre in Manama.
Her remarkable collection of glass sculptures and installations reflects her inspiration and fascination with for the forms and colours of the Arab landscape.
The mother of two moved to Bahrain four years ago and over the last 15 years has lived in Yemen, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
"I've spent many years working here, I have been influenced by the region, it has informed my work and I have enjoyed it immensely. I belong artistically in this region," she explained.
Born in Milan and raised in Pavia, Ms Giuse was submerged in art from a young age.
"It was a youth full of art," she explained "In Italy art is common, we live surrounded by it. Ancient monuments and history are everywhere and you have a natural taste for colour."
As a teenager she started to work with ceramics, enticed by the "three dimensionality" of the medium, but a love for science drew her to geology.
After she completed her master's degree in geology works on a number of quarries and dams followed. She also met her geologist husband whose work led them to the Middle East.
Her study of rocks and minerals also informed her work, creating organic sculptures.
Working with glass is an incredibly intricate and complicated process.
"You start with a coloured sheet of glass and cut it into pieces," she explained. "You place it on a base of clear glass and heat it in an electrical kiln until it becomes soft and sticks together. Then you re-fire it to fashion the glass, and from that technique you can develop and extraordinary variety of techniques.
She added: "When you work with glass you have to be very fast, take decisions very quickly and not regret them."
For more intricate designs Ms Giuse works with 'pate de verre' or powdered glass which she grinds herself.
Her studio is filled with bottles and pieces of glass that she collects to re-mould into structures.
It's environmentally friendly art - everything, even her own works, are recycled and refashioned into new sculptures.
But working with glass can also be dangerous. If the wrong sorts of glass are and heated at a certain temperature they can explode. While living in Saudi Arabia, a piece of glass ripped through the vein on her forearm and she was rushed to hospital.
The exhibition will display some of the key results of Ms Giuse's work since 2004. One section of the exhibition called 'People' incorporates more than 20 glass plaques, each with a multitude of different colours.
"Because of globalisation we are losing our identities and I want people to interact with these plaques and to find their own colour that represents their own identity," she explained.
Another installation named the Ethereal Vestige represents the loss of ancient culture and the fragility of what is left.
The key part of the exhibition, Orizzonti deals with the unparalleled growth of the Middle Eastern metropolis. Horizontals and verticals indicate horizons and endlessly rising architecture.
"The buildings are growing higher and higher to the point that we are destroying them and re-building them even higher. It's the concept of our civilisation to destroy and improve," she said.
Glass works as an analogy for her observations - its fragility and malleability and ultimately, its ability to be perpetually reconstructed and recreated - reflects Ms Guise's vision of the Middle Eastern city.
