The National published Maan Jalal's selection of ten contemporary Arab artists to know in November 2022, a look at creatives from the region doing interesting and important work. Four of the ten are Tabari artists, and they open the list.
Jalal begins with Nasser Almulhim, the Saudi painter and sculptor whose practice explores how geometric and organic shapes interact with each other and with the human psyche, taking a playful, intuitive and bold approach to image making and three dimensional form, and seeking through composition, scale and colour to stimulate psychological shifts. Maitha Abdalla follows, noted for her recent solo exhibition INT. The Body, Sunrise at Cromwell Place in London and for large scale works that combine painting and drawing to depict human and animal hybrid creatures drawn from the folktales of the Arabian Gulf. Alymamah Rashed is introduced through her Surrealist large scale paintings, which combine quirky, floating forms with autobiographical portraiture, regional folklore and everyday objects to explore female subjectivity. Hashel Al Lamki completes the group, an Emirati painter and multidisciplinary artist exploring the connection between humankind and its habitats, natural or manmade, shaped by the cultural, social and spatial development of the Gulf and the UAE.
All four have since built international profiles: Almulhim with solo shows at Tabari, Abdalla at the Aichi Triennale, Rashed with her solo exhibitions in DIFC and Al Lamki at the Sharjah Biennial. Nasser Almulhim, Maitha Abdalla, Alymamah Rashed and Hashel Al Lamki are represented by Tabari.
