Jameela Al-Shraim

Jameela Ibrahim Al-Shraim is a Qatari visual artist and art critic and one of the first ten pioneers of Qatar’s modern visual-arts movement. A member of the first generation trained at the Free Studio, she has worked across painting, graphic art, sculpture, education, criticism and journalism while helping document the contribution of Qatari women artists. She also earned a certificate from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2003.

Her mother, Hessa Abdullah Al-Shraim, returned to study, qualified in nursing and, in 1972, began working as a teaching assistant at the Health Training Institute before becoming Deputy Dean of the Higher Institute of Nursing.

In 2014, Total acquired her painting ‘Qatar Vision’ and inaugurated it at the Museum of Islamic Art to mark eighty years of partnership between France and Qatar.

She learned to recognise beauty from a father who loved his country and gave his life in its service. His example later inspired her recurring images of horses and the Qatari flag. In her husband, she found someone who recognised her talent and sustained it; he and their five children became the strongest supporters of her artistic life.

Born in Al Rumaila into a Qatari family of five children, she has always taken pride in her unusual name. Her mother named her after the Algerian freedom fighter Jameela Bouhired, and she came to see her own artistic struggle as an extension of the meaning carried by that name.

She attended Al Rumaila Primary School and Doha Girls School, later renamed Umm Al-Mumineen School and now Al Liwan, a centre affiliated with Qatar Museums. She completed preparatory and secondary education in Khalifa City. Although her results were generally average, her ability in art was unmistakable. Her father, a driver for Shell Petroleum in Mesaieed, took her to the Corniche and then to Souq Waqif to buy colours, and celebrated every small drawing. Those journeys, together with the love of country he instilled in her, formed a store of sounds, images and ideas that continued to feed her visual memory.

Her father, Ibrahim Nasser Yousef Salem Al-Shraim—may God have mercy on him—died in 1968 while working as a driver for Qatar Petroleum Company Limited. The loss caused profound psychological shock and placed the family under financial pressure. Her mother, Hessa Abdullah Al-Shraim, returned to study, qualified in nursing and, in 1972, began working as a teaching assistant at the Health Training Institute before becoming Deputy Dean of the Higher Institute of Nursing. She was the first Qatari woman to hold those positions in nursing education in Qatar. While meeting the family’s needs, she also supported the talent of her two daughters and provided their drawing materials. Both the happy and painful memories of those years became part of the artist’s creative reservoir and shaped her relationship with her country.

Her mother later married Issa Saad Hamad Al-Nisf Al-Mansoori—may God have mercy on him—who gave her the paternal affection she had lost and supported her ambition. Five more children joined the family, bringing the number of siblings to nine; among them was her sister Salwa Al-Shraim, another pioneer of Qatari visual art.

Childhood taught her that a life should add value. As an orphan without toys of her own, she made art her play, working with colour, scraps of paper and pieces of cloth while sitting on the floor of her room or in its courtyard. At the age of ten, her teacher Mirvat recognised the talent and entered her in an art competition, where she won first prize. Her mother then encouraged her to develop her abilities and enter the Free Studio.

Art-education supervisors at the Ministry of Education gave strong support to the first generation of visual artists, and competitions encouraged gifted girls. In 1983, she joined the Free Studio as one of its earliest female artists. A dedicated bus, stipends and access to materials removed practical barriers and allowed her to take part in exhibitions in Qatar and abroad. During her first year there, she painted ‘Qatar, the Pearl of Goodness’. She studied under Jamal Qotb—may God have mercy on him—the distinguished Arab artist, visual-arts expert and director of the studio. After several years of training, an official letter confirmed her membership of the Qatar Fine Arts Society in 1985.

She received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and art education from Qatar University in 1988. Formal study allowed talent, imagination and intellectual energy to develop through experimentation and work with a human dimension. Her practice progressed towards an expressionist-abstract language marked by gravity and originality, looking beyond visible reality and bringing mind and imagination together in a distinctive visual treatment of Al Shaqab horses.

After graduation, she married Mohammed Saleh Al-Nisf, with whom she had five children: Maryam, Nour, Saleh, Abdullah and Sarah. Her family gave material and moral support to the continuation of her work. Her husband organised visits to museums around the world, including the Louvre in France, created a place for her to paint and helped equip the private gallery she now owns; the first easel he bought for her in Spain remains with her. He supervised the opening of her first solo exhibition in 1989 and accompanied her to exhibitions abroad, including her first honour as guest of honour and a pioneer of Qatari visual art at the Bari Women and Art Festival in 2014, and her recognition at Expo 965 for heritage exhibitors and creators in Kuwait in 2019.

Their children inherited that belief in her work. When she could not attend the World Assembly’s ‘Change’ exhibition in 2021, they represented her at the event.

Her practice included graphic art and linoleum engraving, which prepared the way for sculpture. In 2010, she took part in the first sculpture symposium at Katara and in the Doha, Capital of Arab Culture programme. She participated in the Mal Lawal exhibition in 2012 and was described as the first Qatari female sculptor. Further appearances included the Visual Artists Forum in Muscat in 2013, a guest participation in the Al Asmakh symposium in 2014, the Qatari-Italian exhibition and the Ankara exhibition in Turkey in 2015, and an exhibition in Britain in 2016.

Artistic pluralism mattered more to her than adherence to a single school. Years of experimentation allowed the work to transform, mature and take shape. Arabian horses—and the horses associated with Qatar’s founder, Sheikh Jassim bin Muhammad Al Thani—became a defining icon. Colour functioned as an aesthetic and symbolic value through contrast, tonal harmony and the movement between warm and cool palettes, while mixed media and raised surfaces gave some paintings the presence of sculptural masses.

Writing was another side of the same creative practice. Through the ‘Optics’ column in the Qatari newspaper Al-Sharq, she wrote about visual art and contributed to the development of critical writing on Qatari art.

She regards art as a message of beauty, peace and truth, and believes that the artist should address human concerns while working to elevate the field. A decisive spiritual moment changed her direction: she came to understand creativity as a passage beyond the self and towards divine will, allowing the artist to offer a vision capable of leading rather than merely observing the world.

International acquisition brought a new dimension to the Al-Shraim family’s artistic record. In 2014, Total acquired her painting ‘Qatar Vision’ and unveiled it at the Museum of Islamic Art during the eightieth anniversary of the partnership between France and Qatar. The painting presented Qatar’s future vision and expressed commitment and pride in the country, treating development as the foundation of an educated and aware society. Its horse, both proud and authentic, assumed the character of a dove of peace and carried a positive message in a modern visual language. In the same year, her work was shown in a hall of the Italian Church of Teresa, known for works by the Italian artist Delacura, and she was honoured as guest of honour at the Bari Women and Art Festival. A Qatari-Italian exhibition followed in 2015.

In 2017, she became the first Qatari artist admitted to the Saudi Arabian Society for Culture and Arts in Jeddah. From June to August 2018, the General Secretariat of the Federation of Gulf Cooperation Council Chambers awarded her a certificate of thanks and appreciation following a display of her work in the Sultanate of Oman under the patronage of His Highness Kamel bin Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Said; the certificate was signed by Secretary-General Abdul Rahim Hassan Naqi. In 2018, the Qatar American Center in London acquired ‘The Spirit of Life’, in which the Arabian horse embodies the power of preserving life and the principle that whoever sows love reaps its spirit. In 2019, she joined an artistic discussion at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art with Lina Ramadan and participated in the museum archive exhibition ‘Experience Forward: Art and Culture in Doha from 1960 to 2020’. She also took part in the World Assembly’s ‘Change’ exhibition in 2021. On 1 January 2019, she was selected as an international professor representing Qatar on the International Professors Committee in recognition of her artistic achievements and cultural work.

Her artistic biography was examined at the second annual conference at Mathaf in 2019, where Hala Al-Hadili of the University of Sousse in Tunisia discussed her contribution as a pioneer of Qatari visual art. In 2020, ‘Individual Creation’ was acquired by the Director-General of the French Voltaire schools in Qatar and by the French writer Serge Tellmanin.

The painting ‘Eternal Moment’ travelled through several significant venues. It was shown at Qatar Foundation and Georgetown University in Qatar in 2017, then at the Dubai Index exhibition, the Fire Station and the Qatar International Art Festival in 2018.

The achievement rested on a long period of study, patience, persistence and fatigue. She also describes her entry into the Free Studio from 1982 as a central step: it was Qatar’s first arts centre and artists’ headquarters, with designated days for girls and an environment regarded as socially conservative. Even so, women did not enjoy the same artistic opportunities as men. Early in her career, custom prevented her from travelling abroad to study art or even placing her name on a painting. She was unable to enter her first exhibition, held under the patronage of the Qatar Fine Arts Society at the Sheraton in 1989. Materials, tools and workshops through which experience could be transferred were also scarce. She nevertheless continued, accepted the challenge and became one of the ten pioneers of Qatari art.

Her own gallery, where she conducts her artistic experiments, was added to the museum’s art-map programme, and a delegation subsequently visited the studio in Doha.