Mohammed Al Mohanna: Giving Kuwait’s Shadows a Shape

In Kuwait’s growing contemporary art scene, Mohammed Al Mohanna stands out for creating worlds that feel both familiar and impossible. The 38-year-old illustrator and visual artist merges fantasy with pop culture, layering Islamic aesthetics, childhood nostalgia, and local humour into something that’s distinctly his own. Working across pencil, ink, watercolour, and digital media, his hallmark horned, cloud-like creatures wander through his drawings like recurring thoughts, at once self-portrait and cultural reflection.

“I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember,” he tells Dazed MENA. “It never felt like something I decided to start—it’s simply who I am.” This lifelong obsession, fuelled by a childhood diet of cartoons and Kuwaiti theatre, has become an urgent expression of restlessness that sits between the personal and the political. Issues like animal abuse, cultural destruction, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza propel his raw and honest emotions – anger, frustration, compassion – and he transforms that weight into art. 

The visual artist loves to provoke curiosity and spark questions, finding ways to make the subjects that people might avoid or ignore feel familiar, so viewers can connect with his expression on a personal level. “I sometimes feel like certain characters live in my head, waiting for the right moment to come to life.”

The moment he realised the power of his visual voice came with his viral illustration of Kuwait’s stray cats lying across the country’s map. This tender work sold out faster than he imagined when released as a print. “I want to bring attention to the things people often overlook – small cultural moments, unspoken realities – and make them feel relatable through storytelling,” he explains.

Now, Al Mohanna is ready to expand his universe, dreaming of building a world in which his characters can exist beyond the page. “I’d love to see them grow into a brand that people can form emotional bonds with,” he says. That dream is already taking shape through his first plush-toy collection, set to debut as a pop-up in Kuwait after his upcoming showcase at the Cairo Art Book Fair.

Looking ahead, he hopes to see the regional theatre scene evolve into something as dynamic and celebrated as Broadway, citing Kuwait’s own rich history in the art form. As for his personal journey? He sees the finish line as a lasting creative legacy. “Seeing artists like Dick Bruna, who continued creating Miffy stories until the very end of his life, made me realise how much I’d love to be seen doing what I love even when I’m old and grey.”

If Kuwait’s art scene is currently a combination of old and new, Al Mohanna sits firmly at its imaginative core, sketching the country’s contradictions into something almost tender. His worlds are strange, yes, but they remind you that fantasy can often tell the truth better than realism ever could.