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A Bahraini artist took people on a journey up in the clouds with her ethereal installation at Muharraq Nights, an event organised by the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities (Baca).
May Hejiri’s The Moon in May featured a room full of fluffy, lit clouds that brought a sense of peace and serenity to individuals visiting the magical exhibition that concluded on December 10.
“With my exhibit, I wanted to take viewers to another dimension where they can flirt with the idea of existence and realise the irony of how small we are in a vast timeline,” said the 33-year-old self-taught artist from Saar.
“It was a humbling meditation and I hope viewers came out of it, letting go of all things humanly and tried to see existence from afar. I hope it also inspired them to come up with their own philosophical view of their place in the universe.”
The mediums used to create this exhibit included sheets of soft polystyrene fibre placed atop reusable box-like structures that she found to shape under her clouds.
“I also used a traditional needle, thread and sprays to keep these delicate material intact,” she explained. “The exhibition also included mirrors that I designed with stands.”
The exhibit was a continuation of her first installation, Visiting the Moon, held during Baca’s Food is Culture event in 2021. It was based on her series of paintings that she had worked on since 2018 called Conversations with the Moon.
“The Food is Culture initiative allowed artists and chefs to collaborate,” said May. “I was paired with chef Tabea Lutz. Our topic was to discuss the female moon cycle and how food affected each of the four cycles. What better way to romanticise the female body than with a whimsical trip to the moon. I wanted to bring these moon characters to life and so I tried to recreate the world in which they live in.”
Aside from the clouds, she had added a moon structure for the Food is Culture event made from wood, concrete and plaster.
While the recent cloud installation was a smaller version of her previous exhibit, it still had the effect she was looking for.
“I believe, I got the response I was trying to achieve,” she said. “People would look into the mirrors facing each other that made the cloud installation endless. Children thought they were in a dream, while older viewers came back saying it was fantastical and took them out of the busy ruckus of Muharraq.”
It also captivated Farah Mattar, Baca’s director of culture and arts, who loved the creativity of all the artists at the event as well as May’s stunning structures.
“It was dreamy, mesmerising and engaging for visitors of all ages,” said Farah. “It allowed them to step into the artwork and become part of the artist’s concept. We cater to different audiences in terms of their exposure to the art and we give opportunities for people to experience ideas, concepts and installations that pose questions or invoke feelings.”
As an artist, May focuses on beautifying the fragilities of human condition, that is reflected in her signature moon characters. The characters act as a catalyst for speaking about topics usually sensitive in modern Middle Eastern society.
“I painted at home all the time and took courses on art history and painting techniques,” she added. “I eventually created moon characters that I got obsessed with. They were like a whole world of philosophical theories.
“My artistically-inclined friends would come over and discuss whatever they saw hanging on my walls.”
One of her paintings eventually caught the eye of a restaurant owner after a shop, that framed her art work, sent it to the eatery by mistake. The restaurant owner loved the piece so much and decided to buy it, and May’s artistic career was born.
She even created a moon-inspired deck of cards for Bata; play cards created by local artists and founded by Dana AlAseeri.
May was deeply inspired by her father Ahmed, a retired lawyer and a passionate writer, who always took her to museums and taught her to appreciate art, literature and history.
“Our activities at home were always creative. He would give me pages from magazines and I would draw for him or I would write him a story and illustrate it,” she said.
“If I wasn’t out in the garden, I was always indoors doing something creative - like drawing or coming up with stories, singing or reading to my father. I think it was the same for my siblings who are also creative.”
Her brother Hasan is a sound artist and sister Azza is a jewellery designer.
May is now working on two projects — one of which is a continuation of Conversations with the Moon.
“I would like to tackle the issue of how Arab art, artists and scholars have been marginalised in the West,” she explained.
“The second project is a series of furniture pieces, from lighting to chairs, to bring the interiors of this whimsical world I’ve created into our physical dimension.”
For details, follow @themooninmay on Instagram.
