Sabiha al-Shaikh Da’ud
Women’s rights activist Sabiha al-Shaikh Da’ud was one of Iraq’s first female lawyers.
Tag Archives: Middle Eastern Descent
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Mona Hatoum
Sculptor Mona Hatoum is part of a generation of artists who started to work more commonly across different media in order to best present their intended message.
Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian
As the first internationally famous Iranian woman artist, Monir opened the way for others to follow, although it is difficult to gauge her precise influence on any individual artist. She was the first Iranian woman to have a museum in Tehran dedicated exclusively to her work, and the first Iranian artist of any kind to have a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum (in 2015).
Badia Masabni
Badia Masabni was an entertainer and businesswoman best known for establishing a series of influential clubs in Cairo in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. She is considered to be the mother of modern belly dance and is credited with launching the careers of many Egyptian artists, particularly belly dancers Samia Gamal and Taheyya Kariokka.
Arfa Karim
Arfa Abdul Karim Randhawa was a Pakistani student and computer prodigy who became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) in 2004 at age 10.
Sophia Al Maria
Sophia Al Maria is a Qatari-American artist, writer, and filmmaker whose work has been exhibited at the Gwangju Biennale, the New Museum in New York, and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. She coined the term Gulf Futurism to explain a phenomenon she has observed in architecture, urban planning, art, aesthetics and popular culture in the post-oil Persian Gulf. “The Arabian Gulf is a region that has been hyper-driven into a present made up of interior wastelands, municipal master plans and environmental collapse, thus making it a projection of a global future.” Her interest in these areas arises from her youth growing up in the Persian Gulf area during the 1980s and 1990s, which she describes in her 2012 memoir The Girl Who Fell To Earth. The themes and ideas of Gulf Futurism include the isolation of individuals via technology, wealth and reactionary Islam, the corrosive elements of consumerism on the soul and industry on the earth, the replacement of history with glorified heritage fantasy in the collective memory and in many cases, the erasure of existing physical surroundings. Gulf Futurism utilises imagery from Islamic eschatology, corporate ideology, posthumanism and the global mythos of Science Fiction.
After her studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, Al Maria returned to the Gulf, where she worked towards opening the contemporary and modern art museum, Mathaf, alongside curators Wassan Al-Khudhairi and Deena Chalabi. The museum opened in Doha in 2010. Al Maria calls the experience a formative one, where she was ‘tasked with meeting and interviewing artists like Hassan Sharif or Zineb Sedira—that was my real art education. Having that proximity was, in a weird way, how I got into artmaking.’
Dr Alanoud Alsharekh
Dr Alanoud Alsharekh is a Kuwaiti women’s rights activist and founding director of Abolish 153 (short for Abolish Article 153), a campaign calling to end honour killings in Kuwait.
Anissa Rawda Najjar
Anissa Rawda Najjar was a Lebanese feminist and women’s rights activist, who co-founded the Village Welfare Society (Jam`iyat In`ash Al-Qarya) with Evelyne Bustros in 1953, to advance literacy and economic opportunities for rural women in Lebanon.
Queen Sammurāmat
Shammuramat was a wife of King Shamshi-Adad V who ruled the Neo-Assyrian Empire as its regent for five years after his death in 811 BC until her son Adad-nirari III came of age. She is believed to be the basis for the mythical figure of Semiramis.
Alka Sadat
Alka Sadat is an Afghan documentarian and feature film producer, director and camerawoman.