House of Mirrors Tour with Lidia Qattan

We recently had the opportunity to visit a unique Kuwait landmark, the House of Mirrors.  The House of Mirrors is a museum and art gallery owned and operated by artist Lidia al-Qattan, the widow of Khalifa al-Qattan, a renowned Kuwaiti artist who was the first Kuwaiti to hold exhibitions of his work abroad. She started decorating one small wall with mirrors after her daughter (who helps run the museum) broke one, and then became inspired until the whole house inside and out was covered with mirrors.  

These are the front doors.  At night, they have spotlights on them, which make the mosaic twinkle beautifully. 

This is the outer courtyard, where the images are focused on nature. 












We went to the tour anticipating a short time in her house that is covered in mosaic.  What we got was something much more surreal and entertaining; something totally unexpected in Kuwait.

This is Lidia.  She came to Kuwait with from Italy in 1966 with her Kuwaiti husband.  She's about 4 and 1/2 feet tall, but with a much larger personality.  She is a painter, a sculptor, cosmologist, and a firecracker.  She wears a skirt and pants; she says the skirt was for her husband and the pantaloons for her. 

 Each piece of her art has its own message; about unions in society, women’s rights, human DNA, even some on quantum physics. This room had paintings representing the Big Bang and the creation of the universe.  She has a room dedicated to her ideas about the universe, where the walls are made of painted black carpets, interspersed with flashing lights.  She plays some very space-y music and turns off the lights. The only true word to describe the experience was trippy.



Lidia spoke about the changes in Kuwait since she arrived and how that has impacted her art.  The house is full of her husband's paintings, which are not part of any national collection, although he is perhaps Kuwait's most famous painter. Khalifa's style and his paintings come from a time when Kuwait was a much more open society.  She told us a story of writing an article about one of her husband's most famous paintings, but the newspaper would not print a photo of the painting with the article citing, "sexuality," to which she said, "Absurd!"

These are a couple of Khalifa's paintings. Lidia has almost 70 of them in the house on display.  The one below was my favorite of his, which she said represents the Old Kuwait (inside the circle) and the New Kuwait. 

The house is open by appointment only.  Tickets are 3kd each.  Here is their website for more details on timings and contact information: http://www.mirrorhouseq8.com/

A weekend in Bahrain

Bahrain is a small island kingdom, with just over 1 million people.  It's a short and inexpensive flight from Kuwait, so we decided to spend our recent 3 day weekend there.  We rented a car and explored the main island thoroughly.

Bahrain's economy is entirely based on oil production, which is evident as soon as you enter the desert outside of the city.

We also visited the Tree of Life, a 400 year old Mesquite tree famed for its ability to survive in a desert with no obvious source of water. (Bahrain receives less than 2 inches of rain a year.)  Some people believe it is the site of the Garden of Eden and that is why the tree has survived.  The tree receives up to 50,000 tourists a year.

                                                                                                                                                                  

We spent much of our time wandering around Manama, the capital city.  The picture on the left is of dried whole lemons, a popular seasoning in Arabic food. 










We also visited Qalat al Bahrain, a fort that is an Unesco World Heritage site.  Some of the artifacts found here date back more than 9,000 years.  Bahrain was once ruled by the Babylonians,  the Persians, the Greeks, and the Portuguese, so there is an odd and interesting mix of artifacts and structures in the fort and attached museum.