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Local artist and creator of Yalla Habibi cushions, Nathaly Jung, aims to stimulate the mind and relax the body with her imaginative and functional designs.
The 44-year-old designer from Umm Al Hassam grew up in North Africa and found that art and culture were wound together in the same thread.
Those creative threads stuck with her throughout the years as she became more passionate about art, especially contemporary North African and Middle Eastern artists. Inspired by her diplomat father’s enthusiasm about local art and archaeology and her mother’s keen sense of fashion and design, she found a niche by creating plush pillows.
“I thought cushions were a nice way to present art, promote the artist and make an accessible object. Art can be so distant from the people and a little bit inaccessible. You can have art on your couch – the idea behind it is to bring art into your home and not be intimidated. Make it a part of your life.”
Nathaly moved from Australia to Bahrain with her family in 2009. Her husband, Brendan Muller, 50, works as the web media programme manager at Bahrain Polytechnic in Isa Town. As the mother of a lovely daughter named Lucie, eight, Nathaly came up with the name ‘Yalla Habibi’ because of her soft spot for children and a charming song she heard.
”I’ve always loved children and liked the idea of finding a name that was of a playful kind and that sounded quite quirky and sweet in many languages. If you don’t understand Arabic, ‘Yalla Habibi’ has a nice music to it.”
She dove into the Bahrain art scene by meeting with local artists. Ideas of how she could assist in promoting this type of cultural art started whirring in her mind. She was touched by Egyptian artist Mohamed Sharkawy’s simple and colourful cultural creations and they decided to collaborate together for the first instalment of Yalla Habibi. While the designs of the pillows are eye-catching, it’s the stories behind them that are really intriguing.
“Customers are all very interested in the stories behind the collections, especially Mohamed’s art. Like the one with the camel, the three angels and the man holding the camel. That came from an exhibition from Mohamed called Dabba, which represents the animals,” said Nathaly.
Nathaly retold Mohamed’s story about the Dabba image: “When Mohamed was little, he rode a donkey to school and when his father was going to the market he took a camel and now all these animals have passed away and are gone from their life.
“So the angels have disappeared from the life of all the animals and humans that were living together.
“He grew up in Northern Egypt, quite far away from Cairo, in a rural village and later moved to the big city. But every time he returned to his village he noticed how the kids were being transported by car or bus and the interaction between man and animal had disappeared. It’s interesting to see how moved people are by stories behind art,” she added.
Other featured artists include Reem Al Orrayed, Virginie for Teenytinyom and Al Madrisa Embroidery, alongside Nathaly’s own designs.
One of the most important elements of her collection is the use of hand-woven fabrics. Currently, the only place that carries this type of traditional Bahraini fabric is the village of Bani Jamrah. Nathaly also uses Kufi Calligraphy, a minimalistic geometric Arabic script which originated at the end of the 7th Century in Kufa, Iraq, and is the oldest form of calligraphy in the Arabic scripts.
“It’s very important to me to use this Bahraini fabric because it is beautiful, handwoven and pure cotton. I go to the Bani Jamrah village and I talk with the weaver and we collaborate. The hand-weaving has a very a strong heritage in Bahrain but it’s dying out. My weaver was telling me that the young people don’t really do it anymore. None of his sons are doing it. It’s just him and his brother.”
Because each pillow is handmade, no two are exactly alike. “There is usually one of each kind –one will have different coins, one will have different trim. I find it very difficult to do a series. I need to put a little bit of a creative touch into each of them and I like that each is unique,” she said.
Nathaly recently launched her collection at Words BookstoreCafé in Budaiya and Market 338, which is attached to Al Riwaq, in Adliya.
When Nathaly isn’t perfecting her pillows, she spends a lot of time painting, playing with her daughter, practicing yoga and working as a personal stylist.
For more information on the Yalla Habibi collections, call 39604894 or visit https://yalla-habibi.net/
