Located in the light-filled new extension of lifestyle destination, 360 Mall, Grand Hyatt Kuwait is a destination where art enthusiasts can take in a wide range of pieces created by artists from various parts of the world with different backgrounds but a similar love for creating beauty in all forms. With conceptualized dining concepts, elegant guest rooms and elevated design elements, these art pieces created specifically for the hotel are elevating the standards of a hotel experience and makes Grand Hyatt Kuwait a destination that will never be forgotten. Discover the art, and the incredible artists, in this special feature.

Ahmed Muqeem
Ahmed Muqeem, a self-taught Kuwaiti artist with over 20 years of experience, has completed various artworks in the field of oil paintings and drawings. A lot of his work is showcased in galleries both locally and internationally in countries such as Spain, Greece, Turkey and China and collected by worldwide art enthusiasts. He has most recently worked on a portrait of Sheikh Sabah Al Khalid Al Hamad Al Sabah in 2020 which was showcased on a national flag raised event. He also has a painting at the Abdul Hussain Abdul Redha theater of the Kuwaiti icon. It is worthy to note that the talented artist is responsible for the beautiful artwork featured in Mei Li contemporary Asian restaurant in Grand Hyatt Kuwait.

Akil
Born in Syria in 1988, Akil is a dedicated artist who graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Aleppo and currently resides in Beirut, Lebanon. With a passion for Arabic calligraphy at a young age, he began developing his skills through philosophical and intellectual means related to the letter’s Arab and Islamic culture. Akil participated in several worldwide exhibitions and was awarded first place winner of the Al-Burda Prize in Dubai in 2018. His artworks are based on the Arabic musical “Maqams”, where he converts them from their audio pattern to an optical pattern. “When I hear a voice inside me, I try to hold all these moments of ecstasy and invert them into a letter, a word, an optical language”, he explains. Akil searches for an optical modern language for the Arabic letter.

Fahad Al-Naymah
Fahad Al-Naymah was born in Riyadh and began his artistic career in 1978 at the age of 20. A self-taught artist, he began with simple sketched of his environment that influenced his earlier pieces such as camels, palm trees and other facets of the desert habitat. He portrays camels in an abstract manner that reflects its significance in desert heritage. Al-Naymah won awards throughout his career with the most notable being First Prize at the Architectural Heritage Contest while his work has also been acquired in several countries such as the Green Box Museum of Contemporary Art in Holland, the Saudi Embassy in Canada and many more.

Khalid Shahin
A full-time artist, sculptor and product designer, Khalid Shahin was born in 1966 in Jordan and has more than 30 years of experience in the field of media and advertising as well as corporate identity branding. He has tried to combine and integrate Text-Art, typography and Arabic Calligraphy with his abstract paintings and unique sculptures. He aims to elegantly fuse the richness of traditional Arabic letters, shapes and curves with the innovative spirit of a modern renaissance. Mr. Shahin took part in more than 17 worldwide exhibitions and his works are included in several private and public collections in almost every country around the globe.

Nasser Al Aswadi
Nasser Al Aswadi was born in 1978, at al Hujr village near to Taiz, the third city of Yemen. He studied architecture in Taiz before continuing in Sanaa, where he exhibited his first works in 2001. Since 2008, Nasser has been moving between Yemen and France and uses calligraphy as a way to express feelings and thoughts without them being specifically linked to the language. He picks a writing style that lends the best sense and passion to that work. The letters and words are not drawn down on a straight line or horizontally but painted and stacked separately and identically while being tangled and lost in the imaginary space of the painting.

Zaman Jassim
Born in 1971, Zaman Jassim is a Saudi artist whose mixed media work features visually striking and evocative forms, often enriched by a variety of symbols, patterns and calligraphic signs. In 2011 he was the recipient of the Al Kharafi Biennial Award for Contemporary Arab Art, Kuwait. Jassim has held solo shows in many countries and has participated in group exhibitions in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. His work is in the collections of the Al Mansouria Foundation, the Barjeel Art Foundation, Emaar International, the Kinda Foundation, the League of Arab States and the Saudi Aramco Company.

Nurieh Mozaffari
Nurieh Mozaffari was born in Iran and became seriously interested in painting at the age of 18. She embarked on a Bachelor’s Degree majoring in Art in Iran before completing a Master’s Degree in Painting at Art University in 1996. She taught at the Faculty of Art as well. Her work has been showcased in various exhibitions, whether it was joint work or solo. She them moved to Canada in 1998 where she pursued a diploma in Jewelry Design in Vancouver. This program pushed her to expand her perspective of the world and allowed her to express herself in 3D. She has always drawn from her cultural heritage to complement her creations. Nurieh’s work has been exhibited internationally since 1984 and says that she cannot imagine her life without painting. Her work gives her a strong sense of self and allows her to share her innermost truth with those around her.

Renato Freitas
Renato Freitas was born in Brazil in 1974 and now resides in Miami. He studied filmmaking at the New York Film Academy. Freitas’s works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions in galleries throughout the United States, France, UK, Greece, Kuwait and Brazil. He explains that his driving force is spirituality and believes that “the ethereal becomes real when the realm of the unseen connects thru my soul, and it is expressed in my work with every pallet knife or brush stroke touching the canvas.”

Jamal Abdul Rahim
Jamal A. Rahim was born in Al Muharraq in Bahrain 1965, brought up in its old alleys. He still lives in Al Muharraq where he has built his own house and studio. His artistic journey began after returning to Bahrain from four years in India as he came back with a Diploma in Engineering Drawing. He participated in his first joint exhibition at Al Hala Club in Al Muharraq in 1987 where he was introduced to the eminent Bahraini Artist Ibrahim Busaad who encouraged him to take art seriously as he still viewed it as a hobby beforehand. In 1988, he met another Bahraini Artist, A. Jabbar Ghadban and was fascinated by his techniques in etching and printing. Their relationship developed into a friendship and he decided to learn the basics of these skills as he began working in BAS Studios.

Sabah Arbilli
Sabah Arbilli is an Iraqi Postwar and Contemporary Artist who was born in 1977. The renowned artist and calligrapher holds an MA in Visual Arts by the Visual Institute of Traditional Arts London at the University of Wales. He has shown his calligraphy-based artworks widely and internationally throughout the Middle East, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Australia and throughout the world. Sabah an award winner and a master in traditional calligraphy and delivered many specialized workshops.

Ali Al Mimar
Ali Al Mimar was born in Baghdad in 1965 and graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1985 and the College of Fine Arts, Baghdad in 1991 where he was the first with distinction in his division. He obtained Fa’ik Hassan’s Golden Medal for painting in (Youth Festival – 1985) where that was the real start for him as an artist. He was supervised under the Iraqi Pioneer Artist Fa’ik Hassan as well. He saw Fa’ik Hassan as a mentor and because of that, he entered the world of painting Arabian Horses as he became one of the most significant artists in that field. “In my work, I have always tried to reach beyond the physical beauty of the Arabian horse and what it symbolizes in infinite nobility and manners in our Arabic heritage and culture. Al Mimar’s art being featured in Grand Hyatt is no surprise as the Chairman is known for his love of horses.

Xavier Veilhan
Born in 1963, Xavier Veilhan is a French artist living in Paris and works with photography, sculpture, film, painting and installation art. He graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des arts Décoratifs in Paris. Veilhan continued his artistic education in Berlin at the Hochschule der Künste in the atelier of artist Georg Baselitz. Later, he returned to Paris to finish his studies in 1989 at the Institut des hautes Etudes en Arts Plastiques. He is known for experimenting with the notions of the generic, industrially produced object and of universal representation. He expresses concerns with the scenography of a dedicated presentation and addresses issues of perception as well as the physical and temporal relationships created within the context of the exhibition format. His work is to be found in important public and private collections worldwide.

Nic Fiddian-Green
Born in Ireland 1963, Nic Fiddian-Green is a British sculptor who specializes in making lifelike models of horses’ heads, both smaller and larger than life-sized, he is also the talent behind the central equine sculpture situated in Grand Hyatt Kuwait’s grand lobby entrance. He was educated at Eton College. Later, as a foundation-course student at Chelsea College of Arts, he was sent on a visit to the British Museum to seek inspiration and chanced upon a carving of horse’s head, the horse of Selene, in the Elgin Marbles room there. He described it as “one of the most beautiful objects I’d ever seen”. Shortly afterwards, he began working on similar objects. His sculptures can be described as deeply traditional and startlingly modern. The ragged and physical look of his horses with their rough impressionist surface and rough-cut and riveted panels recall a whole lineage of modernism and cubism to post-war figures and contemporaries. At the same time, his inspiration is clearly Classical. The still simplicity and almost spiritual calmness of his pieces strikes a chord with all who see them. His work is admired by many, including Grand Hyatt’s Chairman who has an admiration for great art and horses.

Tracie Cheng
Tracie Cheng attended the University of Texas in Austin and graduated with a degree in architecture. After several years of architectural work, her desire to shape environments shifted to the visual arts. Cheng’s paintings call to mind natural phenomena with a playful and dynamic quality of space and movement. There is a richness in the fluid layers and interweaving of her lines and paint, all working together to form a textured story. As the first of her Taiwanese family to be born in the United States, Tracie grew up with the complexities of both cultures which has shaped her paintings in significant ways. She emerged with a new style in her works that contain aspects of Chinese brush painting, abstraction, and architectural renderings.

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