Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Prolific painter Wedad Al Bakr is exploring symbols and motifs from folk tales throughout human history at a unique art exhibition in Bahrain’s Al Riwaq Art Space.
Bahrain-loving Saudi artist Wedad’s Garden of Earthly Delights exhibition is comprised of five pieces, each exploring different mediums and themes.
“These pieces each speak for themselves and the nuance lies in the details that go into every piece,” Wedad told GulfWeekly.
“When I paint, I just paint and let the creative spirit flow through my brush onto the canvas – really, I am just a medium for the inspiration when it strikes me.
“This is why I always have up to four pieces going at the same time in my studio, and some pieces can take more than a year to create.”
The centrepiece of the exhibition is a 2.4m x 1.6m piece called The Ceremony which has more than 100 individual figures painted with acrylic and oil paints on canvas.
Inspirations from Western mythology are evident, with one exhibition visitor observing a resemblance to perspective-free medieval art, with motifs ranging from Adam and Eve to Dante’s Inferno.
“The exhibition portrays a whimsical interpretation of ‘the garden’ in canonical literature and religious texts as a site of spiritual and philosophical possibilities,” Wedad explained.
“Here the garden serves as a metaphor that traverses realms of utopia and dystopia, paradise and purgatory, mythology and social doctrine.”
Delving into the many stories told within The Ceremony is a series of seven paintings on cotton, titled Scenes from the Ceremony.
Each of these dives into some of the colours, motifs and folktales depicted in the works as well as across the exhibition.
“The paintings are characterised by a playful aesthetic contrasted with a darker colour palette, in which figures are not attributed to a specific time of culture, but rather an amalgamation of references to historic, divine and contemporary characters interconnected through universal truths,” Wedad added.
A cornerstone of the exhibition is I Have a Name which delves into the legacy of the Queen of Sheba, King Solomon’s wife, and her symbolism in Arabic culture, done with oil and gold leaf on linen.
One of the more ‘meta’ paintings of the exhibition, The Audience is an acrylic and oil canvas work that “questions the act of observing, the observer and the observed.”
In the piece, “the content of the art exhibit is depicted as secondary to the social dynamics of viewership, which provides a framework through which artists situate social hierarchies,” according to Wedad.
Though the exhibition’s namesake pays homage to a 15th century Dutch painting, the artworks collect contemporary narratives in art particularly the interest in the spiritual and mythic, the legacy of alternative surrealism and the resistance of colonial structures through art.
Wedad has been participating in international and local art exhibitions since 2004, after receiving a Bachelor’s degree in Arabic literature and education, complemented with a fine arts diploma from London.
Her paintings were exhibited in Athens in 2009 and at the Palace of Nations in Geneva in 2010.
Wedad held a solo exhibition in Muharraq, Bahrain in 2015, followed by one at the Bahrain Financial Harbour the following year.
In addition to her solo exhibitions, in 2015, she was amongst 46 international artists participating in the Florence Biennalle in Italy.
Her works are housed in several private collections across GCC, London, Washington DC, New York, Athens and Istanbul.
The exhibition runs until June 17 at Al Riwaq Art Space in Gufool. For more details, follow @artwed on Instagram.
