The Muse, 2021

Ghada Khunji, a Bahraini artist, presents The Muse, 2021 at Bin Matar House in Muharraq from 23 October to 25 December 2026. The Shaikh Ebrahim Bin Mohammed Al-Khalifa Center for Culture and Research organises the exhibition. It opens on 22 October 2026 from 7pm to 8pm, and entry is free. On show is a nashel thobe, a traditional ceremonial garment embroidered in gold, which Khunji made as a tribute to Frida Kahlo.

The words stitched across the back of the thobe read "أنا ملهمة نفسي", "I am my own muse": an Arabic translation of Kahlo's statement that she was her own muse. In the photograph released by the organiser, the black garment is seen from behind on a headless form standing in a desert. Gold borders frame it, cross-shaped motifs are worked into the cloth, and a falcon sits on one shoulder. The exhibition's Arabic title is المُلهمة، 2021.

Khunji has turned to Kahlo before: Janet Rady Fine Art showed her FaRIDA series, linked to the painter in subject, at Photo London in 2024. The organiser presents the thobe as a homage. In its reading, Kahlo's self-portraits made pain, grief, love, death and identity visible, and her life became a model of women's resilience and freedom. The garment, it says, carries that example into the heritage and crafts of the Arab world. The centre calls Khunji a multidisciplinary artist whose work crosses cultures, histories and personal stories.

Khunji was born in Manama in 1967 and lived and worked in New York from 1991 to 2013. She graduated from Parsons School of Design in 1995 and from the documentary programme of the International Center of Photography in New York. In 2017 she was among the Bahraini women artists in نساء بعين فنانات بحرينيات (Women through the eyes of Bahraini women artists) at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The show opened on 12 September 2017 and was organised with the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities. In 2025 Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture Gallery in Philadelphia showed her work in The Dark Ages. The gallery describes her practice as spanning photography, mixed media and self-portraiture.