Of Outer Participation

Kuwait sculpture is second

KSFA participated in The Muscat Art Festival

Zainab Ali Al-Saiegh
The Kuwaiti Child who won in Kanagawa painting

The KSFA participated in the 10th Kanagawa Biennial World Children Art Exhibition, which was held by the Kanagawa Prefectural Government. Some 46.402 art works from 39 countries participated in this competition and 5 regions all over the world.
The Kuwaiti child ZAINAB ALI AL-SAOEGH (13 years old) won an Award of Excellence for her artwork, the exhibition organizers told. The added that "the prizewinning works will be exhibited at the Kanagawa Plaza for Global Citizenship in Yokohama in March 1999."
The Kuwait Society for Formative Arts was interested in participating in this Kanagawa art event since its 1st initiation.

THE MAHARES INTERNATIONAL ART FESTIVAL 1998
by Lidia Qattan

Mahares stands about 370 Km. away from Tunis, the capital, and one can reach it either by train or by car. The Kuwait Embassy at Tunis provided us with land transportation, hence we had the pleasure of seeing the countryside with its rolling hills and vast plantations of olive-trees, seemingly stretching into infinity.
At our arrival at the Festival we met and mingled with artists from other Arabian countries and from Europe in a convivial atmosphere typical of such a gathering.

I soon discovered that Mahares in its frugality holds a treasure other cities could be envious of. All along the waterfront there are about one hundred sculptures all created by visiting artists attending the Festival each year, the number of art works is growing with every new festival. This in itself is its great attraction.
Art is a transforming phenomenon, it tutors our innermost sentiments to appreciate beauty, and it refines our feelings and makes us more sensitive and concerned towards everything that surrounds us whether it is nature and all living things or our man-made world.
Mental culture is needed. It provides the biological basis for the connection between work and leisure; it should become the natural goal of human development.

The Mahares International Art Festival has proved to be an excellent idea that should be adopted by other countries, in the Arabian world in particular were a true mental cultural development is needed to combat the skepticism and indifference towards local talents.
Tunis has not great wealth, but it has a sense of beauty and a feeling for the arts. There the artists are appreciated and looked upon with respect and consideration not only by the specialist but also by the common people.

The law of aesthetics, expressed in the nobility of taste, affirms itself in a desire for simplicity, moderation, and refined gradation and balance in form and color and sound. There is a certain refinement of nature in the Tunisian landscape reflected almost everywhere, even in the simple rural architecture that evokes a glad response in the observer.

Mahares itself may appear an insignificant fishermen town with no striking beauty nor attractions, till one comes into contact with its art treasure and meets the common people, specially the very young, those still very innocent and unaffected, who come to see the artist at work at the open atelier.

Indeed the most important activity of the whole festival is when the artist start to paint and people crowd in to see the work in progress.

At Mahares the idea of taking the art out of the atelier and on to the street among the people was born in 1978 when Yousef Al Raqiq, a well known Tunisian film-star, stage director and painter, with a group of friends of alike mind, decided to establish an annual International Art Festival, during which artists from all over the world would exhibit their work and produce a painting or sculpture to be left behind as a donation to the city. Among the founders and supporter of the festival is the owner of the most beautiful hotel in town, an architect and artist, who built the place through the years, adding something new to the original building, till itself has developed into a sort of an artistic creation. Helping him has been his Belgian wife, Daniel Abdulla, an accomplished original artist who has completely decorated the place with her original paintings. This hotel and the next near to it offer comfortable accommodation for a nominal price to the artists attending the Festival.

The idea of taking the arts out of the atelier and on to the street among the people is not new. In Kuwait the first to suggest it and sponsor it was the Mayor of Hawally, who in the late eighties organized an open-air atelier on the water-front of Kuwait city to which every artist of the Kuwaiti plastic Arts society was invited to take part. .
It was a beautiful event. There was a wonderful exciting feeling for us artists to be among people, showing our works, making connections and new friends. By far the happiest moment was when we all began to paint on the huge canvas, casting our thought and feelings in complete freedom of style and inspiration. The experience was refreshing and exhilarating but the enthusiasm that flared that evening, and brought the artist and crowd together for a short while, was allowed to die there and then. Although successful the event was never repeated.
Perhaps if allowed to continue through the years that open-air activity would had become a cherished tradition of great benefit to the artist and society in general.

Kuwait in the sixties and seventies was at the vanguard of many cultural innovations in the Gulf, but in the latest decade it has been lagging behind due to social forces beyond the artist to control or escape.
Hopes are not lost .The Kuwait National Council of Culture Arts and Letters working together with the Kuwait Plastic Arts Society will meet the challenge and there will be a revival.