Image Credits
Brian Downie Photo

Working under the dual identities of Mariam Haji and Meri Helmi, the artist navigates a transnational practice that bridges Gulf iconographies with Nordic aesthetic restraint.

 

As MariamHaji, she interrogates the body through symbolism, embodiment, and the politics of Arab womanhood, re-contextualising European art-historical frameworks to examine how representation shapes cultural memory and gendered power.

 

As Meri Helmi, she extends this inquiry into a more contemplative register, merging Gulf traditional visualities with Scandinavian minimalism to explore faith within secular societies, the intimacies of motherhood, and the. transformative conditions of diasporic existence.

 

Together, these intertwined personas form a single conceptual continuum, an evolving methodology that uses drawing, sculpture, painting, and performance to articulate how belief systems, cultural inheritance, and lived experience converge within the contemporary image.

 

She represented the Kingdom of Bahrain at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) and at Finland’s Mänttä Art Festival (2021). In 2012, she received First Prize at Bahrain’s 38th National Fine ArtCompetition for her Muse series, becoming the youngest female artist to receive an honorary award from the late Prime Minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa. Her works are held in. both public and private collections, including the National Museum of Bahrain, the NationalTheatre of Bahrain, the Ministry of Culture, Beijing, and the private collection of AG Behbehani, Kuwait. Recent solo exhibitions include Retribution, Le Pavé d'Orsay, Paris (2025); The Sea is Calling, Luckan Cultural Centre, Helsinki (2022); Dancing Oysters, Grand Cultural House, Porvoo (2024); and Birth of Consciousness, Suomenlinna Cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site,Helsinki (2024). In 2022, she debuted her Finnish identity, Meri Helmi, with a landmarkexhibition in the Crypt of Helsinki Cathedral, where she became the first Arab female artist to exhibit in that historic space.