Waheeda Malullah

Bahraini artist Waheeda Malullah is one of GMEP's favorites.
An active member of Bahrain Contemporary Arts Association, Malullah is an artist whose work includes elements of video, photography, installation and performance. Women and children appear regularly in her work which touches on issues such as child psychology, feminism and women in Islam. Another common theme is football.

"Football, being Bahrain's national sport, is a starting point for the artist in order to examine her identity and the role as a girl and woman that has been imposed on her since her birth. For her, the rules of the game and the social mechanisms attached to them serve as a model and a structure for the staging of feelings and for the projection of desires."

Even as a child Malullah challenged gender roles in her own subtle way. "When I was in the fourth grade, I started to wear a hijab as ordered by my sister, Maryam, who was only one year older than me! I used to wear the hijab in my own way, open on the sides but still covering my hair, the way men wear their Shumagg ."

The slideshows presented here are are compiled for GMEP and are still photographs and not multimedia or video.