Lubna AlAfandi doesn't paint at an easel. Her mirrors lie flat on a table while she pours glass paint straight onto the surface and moves it with a stick — "any stick, even something from the kitchen" — a technique she taught herself through years of trial and error.
Born in Iraq, she arrived in Abu Dhabi in 2007 and raised her daughters there. A decade in Canada gave her what she calls her artistic signature: a turn towards Arab heritage, the Arabic language and the community of Arab artists she found abroad. She has since returned to Abu Dhabi.
Her palette is unmistakably Iraqi. Turquoise and gold run through almost everything she makes — the colours of domes, minaret tiles and traditional dress — alongside Babylonian lions, painted shanashil houses, clay bastouqa jars with the seven protective eyes, and women she always paints as cherished, adorned and generous.
The UAE has given her a second body of work, including the two pieces now at Hala. For the Sheikh Zayed portrait, she poured the paint an inch at a time so she could set each glass bead by hand, angling them so the light picks out the agal, the beard and the eyes. For the UAE Map mirror, she worked with a calligrapher to shape a Quranic verse — "make this a secure land and provide its people with fruits" — into the outline of the country.
Ask which works she would save if all the rest vanished and she names two: a bouquet of three roses for her three daughters, and a painting of herself and her sister, each with a braid.
