Ghadah Alkandari

Exhibited in

2025

Ghadah’s body of work ranges from large-scale, primarily figurative, acrylic paintings exploring the wide spectrum of human emotion and familial complexities, to smaller, intimate pen and ink drawings that focus on the banality of everyday life.

Ghadah Alkandari is a Kuwaiti artist born in Delhi in 1969. In 1992 she received a BA in Mass Communications from the American University in Cairo. But it was a six-week painting course at the School of Visual Arts that shaped her current painting style, which was also influenced early on by both classical painters: Cezanne, Matisse, Schiele, Modigliani and Klimt, and comic books: Mad Magazine, Archie and Asterix. Recently, her work has segued into more abstract forms and shapes, a deconstruction of her usual subjects. Abandoning the familiar forms she was accustomed to has allowed her to immerse herself further into her works, by transporting her own movement and physical tics into her paintings.

The artist had numerous solo exhibitions in Kuwait and abroad, and has participated in several group exhibitions locally and internationally, including the Arab Culture in Diaspora exhibition in Kuwait, Femmes Artistes Du Koweit at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris (2006), Approaches to Figurative Practices at the Third Line Gallery, Dubai (2007), and Metro 23 | Half-Tales from a Moving Train, Access Art Space, Cairo, Egypt (2023)

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maryam’s sons

2026

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Folk Art Space

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In 2023 we learned that my father’s kidneys were failing. Early this year, on January 30, I learned that I was going to be a grandmother. Since then, my life teetered between glee and despair, hope and desperation, sadness and joy. One would be born, the other would die. For almost a year, the two events unfolded in tandem and the parallels between them were uncanny. My grandson was born on September 30 and my dad died on December 6. They existed in the same world for 62 days. My grandson, my father. One came, one went. Both, Maryam’s son.

In 2023 we learned that my father’s kidneys were failing. Early this year, on January 30, I learned that I was going to be a grandmother. Since then, my life teetered between glee and despair, hope and desperation, sadness and joy. One would be born, the other would die. For almost a year, the two events unfolded in tandem and the parallels between them were uncanny. My grandson was born on September 30 and my dad died on December 6. They existed in the same world for 62 days. My grandson, my father. One came, one went. Both, Maryam’s son.