By YASIN ABU TAQIU
In a society troubled by religious extremism, an Arab woman is using art to promote religious tolerance. Majd Ramadan has showcased her work in more than 100 exhibitions in the Middle East, Europe and Asia. Born in Qatar to Lebanese parents, she divides her time between Doha and Beirut.
“From childhood I have liked drawing and painting, and this helped nurture me as a professional artist,” she says.
Majd’s art seeks out the similarities between religions in a bid to promote tolerance. In 2012, she painted an icon in which she expressed the similarities between Islam and Christianity.
The icon was well received in Europe and the Middle East, and in 2012 it was presented to Pope Benedict XVI in Vatican. The Pope awarded Majd a gold medal in acknowledgement of her works.
“As we arrived in Vatican City, the officials told me I was the first Muslim to present an icon to the Vatican and that the Pope was happy with my work to bridge the gap between religions using art,” she said.
“I was also in the company of then Lebanese president Michel Suleiman and the event is a big highlight of my entire career.”
Majd, who is in her late forties, is a mother of two — a boy and a girl, both pursuing their postgraduate degrees.
Mohammed Ramadan, the elder child, said his mother was still pursuing her artistic career out of a burning desire to communicate and shed light on social and religious issues.
“I am proud to be born to a mother with a talent and one who does not sit on her talent but goes out to help the community,” he said.
“The most inspiring part of her work is that she works with special needs children in Qatar to develop their talents.”
Majd also seeks to present through art the Arab people’s perspective of conflicts that have denied them happiness.
She recalled that at an exhibition in Brussels the organisers remarked that the works she was showing were full of people in bright colours supposedly attending entertainments, but with no smiles on their faces.
“My response was that these are pictures of Arab people whose countries are being torn apart by war, and why would you expect them to be smiling when thousands of their own people are being killed day and night in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Palestine and others?”
The response struck the organisers and they announced that they would take my collections to the Grand Palais in Paris, the top destination for any artist’s collections, she said.
Majd’s works also speak for female empowerment, with expressions of Arab femininity in most of her collections. According to her, Arab women are good artists who have always taken a leading role in designing their homes, the look of the kitchen and the decoration of sitting rooms and bedrooms. This talent was for long confined to their homes, but recently Arab women have begun to express themselves in public through art. She said she had worked with several Arab women artists and been inspired by their brilliance and ability to give context to art.
Majd has also painted an icon showing H H Sheikha Moza bint Nasser as a champion of women’s empowerment in the Arab world, and said that she wanted all Arab women to embrace her as their role model.
She said that the ‘Artist in Residence’ programme launched recently by H E Sheikha Al Mayasa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani at the fire station building will help women develop their artistic careers.
The ‘Artist in Residence’ programme is scheduled to commence in September 2015 and run for nine months. The programme will include 20 artists from a range of different disciplines, including art, photography, design, architecture and other fields. Twenty studios will be open to artists selected for the residency, while four will be reserved for visiting artists.
In Qatar, Majd is helping foster artistic talent in children at Dhreima, the Qatar Orphan Foundation.
She said she had discovered how children were good at telling stories through art. Once, she had asked the children to paint something that revealed a secret, and one of the girls painted a picture of a pregnant woman. She wrote ‘boy’ on her belly and painted two girls standing around the woman, crying.
“When I asked her the meaning, she told me that their mother was expecting a baby boy and she, with her other female sibling, would soon be ignored and the boy will get all their parents’ attention and love. The girl was portraying the common phenomenon of Arab parents preferring boys to girls.”
Majd has also authored a collection of children’s stories titled Al Yaqouti.
THE PENINSULA
