When Find Art Experts recently traveled to the Middle East, we were were interested to determine whether or not there was any truth to the Western notion that women in the Arab world are oppressed and given little opportunity for artistic self-expression. We found instead that Arab women artists are doing great works. Here is one important Arabic female artist that caught our attention:

Thuraya Al-Baqsami was born in Kuwait in 1951. In 1956, Thuraya was sent to the Choueifat boarding school in Lebanon, however she returned to Kuwait as a civil war broke out in Lebanon in 1958.

In 1974 she moved to Moscow. She enrolled in the Surikov Institute – one of Russia’s most renowned art universities – and eventually completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees there. Her exposure to a Russian art training was extremely beneficial. She was taught that being an artist was a profession, and that she should view her work as legitimate labor, a revolutionary idea for her at the time. Having that mindset lit a spark, and motivated her to tackle her work with a much more dedicated attitude. It is here that she learned various graphic print-making techniques – namely lithograph and linocut – that greatly affected her creative output. Later in life, her work became best known for these graphic techniques, which were virtually unheard of in the Arab world. 

Her work presents a strong voice in the region, one that does not bow down to the societal and political pressures it faced and continues to face. Her idiosyncratic background and multi-cultural exposure creates a mélange of histories, concepts and forms in her works that are still ever changing and evolving today.