Maryam Al-Mulla

Maryam Al-Mulla is a Qatari visual artist and beauty specialist whose paintings preserve traditional professions, clothing, games and memories of earlier Qatari life. Working in a distinctive Cubist-influenced style, she has used heritage and personal experience to form a visual record of identity and endurance.

She ranked first in the university admission test with a score of one hundred per cent.

Her artistic language is rooted in Qatari memory. She paints traditional professions, clothing, popular games and scenes from an earlier way of life, preserving customs that have begun to disappear. By applying a Cubist-influenced approach to historic images, she developed a recognisable style in which heritage, colour and personal experience meet.

Teachers identified her talent while she was still young. When the first free studio opened in Fereej Al Sudan, one of them encouraged the family to enrol her despite limited means. At fifteen, she travelled there by bus twice a week and became one of its earliest female trainees. Under centre director Jamal Qutb, she joined artists including the late Wafaa Al-Hamad. Her black-and-white ink drawing of a Qatari family won second place in the studio’s first exhibition, behind Al-Hamad.

Marriage at fifteen interrupted both school and painting. She returned briefly for the studio’s second exhibition after its director contacted the family, then withdrew again as domestic responsibilities grew. Beauty work and henna provided income and kept her creative instinct active. Persistent requests eventually secured permission to resume school on the condition that she pass the third preparatory year through home study. She succeeded, returned to education and continued henna work, later taking part in cultural weeks in Berlin and, through Al Jasra Club, New York.

At the end of secondary school, hesitation nearly kept her from university. Her friend Najah Aman Al-Khater believed in the talent so strongly that she registered her without her knowledge. She ranked first in the admission test with a perfect score, won immediate praise from the teaching staff and continued with the encouragement of her mother. One month after graduation, she began work as a teacher.

Her marriage ended after the birth of her daughter, Fatima Al-Ajmi. She filled the difficult period with work, motherhood and support for talented pupils. At school, she established an art club, organised an exhibition and introduced computer-based drawing techniques. The programme earned recognition as the first of its kind at a school and included training for other teachers.

Years later, she collapsed without warning and was taken to hospital, where paralysis was diagnosed. Treatment was long and painful. Medical staff in Germany noticed her ability and encouraged her to keep creating, but after returning to Qatar she struggled to accept the wheelchair and remained inside her home for four years. Even then, she followed developments in digital drawing and experimented on palm fronds, jars, ostrich eggs and wooden panels. Sharing the work online brought an audience whose encouragement helped reopen her world.

A visitor involved with productive families admired the work and the house, which had become a small museum. She explained how to obtain adapted transport, registered her for an event and helped bring the work before the public. Invitations to exhibitions followed, along with a shop in Souq Waqif Al Wakra. Her designs began appearing on clothing and phone accessories.

A university event and the circulation of her work on social media led to support from Radio Wadha on Snapchat and a recommendation to Sky Climber. Director Azza Salah was seeking an experienced art-creative director to train pupils in modern techniques. She supervised a small group whose Katara exhibition attracted ambassadors and ministers. At a youth centre, director Salman Al-Malik responded to her request by creating an accessible area within ten days; there she also met artists Ali Al-Mulla and Dana Safar, who offered practical encouragement. With brushes and colours supplied by the centre, she overcame the physical difficulty of working on a large canvas from a wheelchair and produced one of the paintings she values most.

That work brought her into a group exhibition attended by established artists and members of the Qatar Fine Arts Society. The heritage dimension, Cubist treatment and scale of her paintings stood out. Society director Youssef Al-Sada invited her to show two works at its first exhibition. Although she felt self-conscious about meeting the audience in a wheelchair, the Society encouraged her to discuss the paintings. One of the visitors, Adel Ali, praised her use of colour, distinctive style and choice of scenes. She sold her first painting there for QAR15,000.

In 2006, she began preparing her first solo exhibition at Katara, ‘Colourful Memories’. The response to the paintings led to an early opening date before every final touch was complete. A widely shared appeal invited His Highness the Father Amir to visit. His office attended on his behalf and insisted on purchasing a painting rather than accepting it as a gift. The exhibition drew a large audience, included artists Ali Al-Sharif and Issa Al-Malki, and established her as a professional artist with a growing public following.

Her second exhibition, ‘Hymn of Steadfastness’, coincided with the blockade and drew on Qatari heritage and collective memory. At its centre was a three-by-two-metre painting created over two months. Its symbols addressed strength, separation, injustice, disrupted travel and the unity of Qatar’s people and government. A bird represented His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and the protection associated with his leadership; a loosened chain evoked the rupture between societies joined by history and culture. Poet Radi Al-Hajri responded with a poem of about twenty lines, recorded to accompany the work. The exhibition attracted buyers and led to her nomination for a visit to France.

A later attempt to resume treatment did not restore her ability to walk and brought further health difficulties. She returned instead to exhibitions, workshops and school visits. Her record included first and third place in separate editions of Halal Qatar, participation in a competition on solidarity during the Covid-19 crisis and certification as a trainer through the Itqan programme at Ettizan Centre. The heritage-and-Cubism signature of her work had by then become immediately recognisable.

Along the way, hardship introduced her to people who became lasting sources of support. Coach Fatima Al-Moadhadi brought optimism and affection to the journey; their bond grew so close that she calls the artist ‘Mother’. What began as a return from isolation became a sustained public practice built on memory, resilience and the conviction that disability does not limit creative worth.