The Feminist Art Community (“ArtFem”) is a non-profit community of female artists from all over the world. We’re all here to accomplish our goals as artists in our art practices and art businesses while following our own unique paths and supporting each other. We aim to highlight those changing the world for the better through art.

Shirin Neshat is a mixed medium artist who utilises film and photography to comment on the intertwining issues of gender, femininity, religion and violence in Iran. Her work is known for using visual contrasts – such as black and white, light and dark – as tools for political statements. Some of her best-known work includes The Women of Allah series (1993-1997), which is a series of female portraits with their faces covered by Farsi texts, handwritten by two feminist Iranian poets. The series reflects Neshat’s reaction to post-revolutionary Iran, which she found unrecognisable after her time abroad.

Denise’s goal is to spread happiness by enabling everyone to feel and paint like an artist, either at home or at her events. Denise moved to Dubai from the Netherlands in 2013 and has single handedly created the burgeoning painting scene & Paint & Sip  community in the United Arab Emirates. Unable to find a creative community in Dubai, she created one herself by giving painting lessons to her friends in her villa, just as her accomplished artist grandmother had done with her as a child. Things quickly blossomed and she soon created Paint & Grape, where anybody, without any painting experience, could turn up and over a few hours listening to French music and drinking a nice drink, anybody could create a masterpiece. 

We Love Art events are the highlight on the Events in Dubai creative scene and she has recently expanded to give events at the Café Museum in Louvre Abu Dhabi. We Love Art has connected thousands of people together and created amazing art and memories of happiness throughout the UAE. Many people who have taken her courses have gone on to become artists in their own rights or even started painting classes themselves based on her inspiration. Many people have credited We Love Art with changing their lives in ways that only accessibility to art can. Whilst there are copy cat events popping up in the UAE, each with a different angle (some original and some not so original!), We Love Art clearly remains the standout and best experience, with its artistic fundamentals coupled with its premium approach, focus on happiness (perhaps borne from that Dutch spirit!) and vibrant community. We at ArtFem worship We Love Art in Dubai for democratising access to the creation of art in the Middle East !

Mona Hatoum uses her experience as a displaced Palestinian as inspiration for her work. Her art uses everything from performance, videos and installations to discuss themes related to the nomadic lifestyle including travel, movement, culture and people. Her most thought-provoking work includes Slicer (1999), Paravent (2008) and Daybed (2008), which use out-of-proportion utensils and objects to raise questions about society’s relationship with shared spaces and the notions of freedom and captivity.

The first influential Middle Eastern artist on our list is the Palestinian-born artist Mona Hatoum, known for her multidisciplinary practice rooted in different theoretical frameworks. The central theme of her work is the body as a signifier of social and political contestations. Hatoum also investigates the notion of space, as well as the psychological and emotional implications her works evoke.

The artist emerged in the 1980s and her early work was focused on performances based on a direct physical confrontation with an audience often aiming to underline the background of the political turmoil in Palestine.

Although Hatoum eventually shifted to working with installation and sculpture, this particular aspect of thematizing the conflicts occurring throughout the decades in the Middle East prevails in her body of work as an indication of the vulnerability of the individual in regards to the systemized violence.

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (1922 – 2019) was an Iranian artist and a collector of traditional folk art. Her artistic practice is characterized by the use of geometric patterns and traditional Iranian mosaic techniques. She expressed herself through painting, drawing, textile designs, and fashion illustration.

During the late 1960s Farmanfarmaian was active in New York and has worked with magazines such as Glamour, and retailers such as the Bonwit Teller; there, she befriended a young Andy Warhol, as well as Louise Nevelson, Jackson Pollock, and Joan Mitchell. In 2017, the Monir Museum was opened in Tehran in her honor.

Emily Jacir is a deeply political artist who uses a combination of audio-visual media to advocate for Palestinian rights. Her work Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948 (2001) is a tent for refugees on which 140 people – including Palestinians and Israelis – sewed the names of destroyed Palestinian villages. Another subversive piece, Sexy Semite (200-2002) invited 60 Palestinians to post ads in The Village Voice magazine’s personals section, seeking Jewish romantic partners to marry, in order to invoke Israel’s Law of Return and be able to return to Palestine. Jacir was also awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2007 for her installation Material for a film (2005), which tells the story of the assassination of Palestinian writer Wael Zuaiter by Mossad agents in Rome in 1972.

Manal Al Dowayan is one of the most regarded artists in Saudi Arabia and uses women’s experiences in the country as her main source of inspiration. She uses a mix of photography, installations, textiles, paints and lights to create complex and layered pieces of art. Her most political pieces include the photographic series I AM (2007), which she created in response to King Abdulla Al Saud’s speech stating the importance of women’s participation in the workforce. The photographs show professional women in Saudi traditional dress and jewellery donning accessories used in traditionally male fields, such as a stethoscope. Al Dowayan is best known for the installation she contributed to the Venice Biennale in 2011 entitled Suspended Together (2011). The piece is made up of 200 fiberglass doves with travel permission documents printed on their bodies, symbolising Saudi women’s need for a guardian’s permission before being able to travel.

Boushra Almutawakel’s art explores the west’s obsession with veiled Middle Eastern women post 9/11. She aims to challenge stereotypes about the veil, which is widely viewed to be a symbol of oppression or an enticing accessory that hides an exotic beauty. Her work, which often features women wearing the hijab, gives them the opportunity to be more than just a stereotype. It reflects the real lived experiences that come with covering one’s body, from freedom, power, culture, protection, danger and beauty. She is known for using dolls in her photographs as representations of Muslim women, such as in her series featuring Fulla, the Muslim Barbie doll who wears the veil. A doll is also present in her hijab series Mother, Daughter, Doll, which features the three subjects becoming more and more covered in each photograph.