FIGURATIVE drawing and painting has a far stronger tradition in the Middle East than the abstract work that regularly fills galleries in the West. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the work of famous Bahraini artist, Abdullah Al-Muharraqi, who is currently showing at Abu Dhabi's Ghaf Gallery in an exhibition sponsored by the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation. Although some of the work on display leans far more toward surrealism and cubism than realism, there is a distinct illustrative quality to much of the work that recalls his earliest roots in portraiture and his current “day job” as a cartoonist for Bahrain's daily “Akhbar Al-Khaleej and Sharjah's “Al Bayan.” The political content of his cartoon work also infuses much of his painting, with some pieces serving as direct metaphors for many of the issues that affect the Arab world. Al-Muharraqi is very concerned about his roots, both as an Arab and as a Bahraini. “Whether realist, cubist or surrealist, I want my painting to reflect the feeling I have for my country,” he has said. “I'm a part of this land, and my art must not be far from my artistic expression. Like a tree, roots are very important.” The paintings on display in Abu Dhabi come from Muharraqi's private collection, works that he has chosen not to sell. Perhaps the most iconic work on display is A Pearl Diver's Tragedy (1973), a reflection on the main livelihood of Bahrainis and inhabitants of the “Trucial States” before the discovery of oil in the region. Diving for pearls was an occupation clearly fraught with many dangers and one whose end users were basically the foreign elite and the merchants who profited from them. The painting is highly symbolic of the sort of food chain engendered by the pearl market and its most chilling element is the body of the pearl-necklaced woman whose body slithers down the left side of the painting as if it were becoming a mermaid's tail, only to end in a threatening serpent's mouth close to a diver extracting pearls from oysters. In Muharraqi's talk at the exhibition's opening, he made sure to point out that what looks to be a menacing shark is really only another facet of nature that, like the men diving for pearls, is seeking only to ensure the continuation of his own life. The same general theme can be seen clearly in “A Man and his Fate” (1967). “The Stumble of a Horse” (1968) is one of his most overtly political paintings even if it does not at first appear so. Painted one year following the 1967 war with Israel, Muharraqi explained that he made this painting when greatly distressed by defeat of the Arab forces by what he described as “this tiny country of Israel.” It was, he said, a period of great soul-searching for the Arab people, a period during which self-confidence and simple identity was called in question. This sentiment is furthered in another of his paintings in which a man is being pulled in opposite directions by two men on horseback. Although he said it was a direct result of the US-USSR rivalry in the Middle East during the Cold War, it is a far more universal symbol that serves to describe the reality in many nations today. __
