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Meet The Trailblazing Female Artists Of Bahrain

Natasha Burge
The Establishment
Published in
10 min readDec 8, 2016
Consumed by Roots’ by Ramah Al Husseini and an image of Yasmin Sharabi.

‘You have to be brave to make it in this industry.’

I’m rushing down the winding alleyways of Adliya, the Kingdom of Bahrain’s funkiest district, on my way to the album launch party for the island’s only homegrown baroque’n’roll band. It’s November, but the evening is warm and jasmine-scented. Groups of people wander streets crowded with cafes, shawarma stands, and bougainvillea-draped villas that look grandiose in the moonlight.

I’m halfway through a whirlwind 24-hour exploration of Bahrain’s dynamic art scene, as seen through the eyes of some of the country’s most talked about young, female creators. Bahrain is the smallest nation in the Middle East — you’ll need to squint at the map and look for the islands off the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia to find it — but its influence on history has been tremendous. As the heart of the ancient Dilmun civilization, Bahrain spent millennia as a trade hub, saturated by the ebb and flow of cultures, which left the nation with an eclectic feel unique in the Arabian Gulf.

“There were no stepping stones for me as a woman in the industry.”

The Gulf region has made waves in the art world recently, with Qatar building a collection of international masterpieces at such an impressive rate that it has become the world’s…

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The Establishment
The Establishment

Published in The Establishment

The archives of culture + politics site, The Establishment. Media funded and founded by women — Nikki Gloudeman, Kelley Calkins and Katie Tandy with Ijeoma Oluo, Ruchika Tulshyan and Jessica Sutherland. The conversation is much more interesting when everyone has a voice.

Natasha Burge
Natasha Burge

Written by Natasha Burge

Writer. Living on the shores of the Arabian Gulf.