The minuscule state of Bahrain, morphed from an emirate into a kingdom 14 years ago,  is striking out to win international recognition for its own home-grown contemporary art scene on the heels of last year’s commercial fair initiative, ArtBahrain. In what evidently is the next instalment of that effort, 17 artists will show their work in a London exhibition, Bahrain Art Across Borders, which abbreviates neatly as BAAB or baab, Arabic for door. The turmoil that has tailed Bahrain since the 1970s Iran revolution next door and the more recent multi-layered manifestations in search of reform have left little unscathed in Bahrain. But culture’s healing hand is never to be underestimated. True, there’s left much, much more to be done, but art’s great capacity for expression is cathartic in parts and the experience of Bahrain is no exception. ArtBahrain and BAAB demonstrate that a door indeed has opened, with endless possibilities for art to do what it does best in locating culture, fixing identity and letting creativity loose on an uncharted territory with unforeseeable but usually unforgettable rewards. Bahrain has a long tradition of art, not just through Dilmun antiquity of the third millennium BCE, but also in the formative years before and after its brush with British, Portuguese and Persian Safavid colonialism, in a reverse chronological order. The discovery of oil made Bahrain the precursor of what followed tens of years afterwards in its southern reaches of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Early contemporary painting and craft was influenced by India under Britain, various neighbours and finally the West. Bahrain Art Across Borders doesn’t touch upon that period; neither does it include other Arab, Asian or European artists who’ve made Bahrain their home. But that’s just as well, because the exhibition centres instead on Bahrainis’ own encounter with their milieu and their experiences at home and abroad both as observers and as participants in the nation’s march through history. The participating artists in alphabetical order are: Somaya Abdulghani; Jamal Abdul Rahim; Amina Al Abbasi; Hamed Al-Bosta; Faika Al Hassan; Lulwa Al-Khalifa; Marwa Al Khalifa; Nabeela Al Khayer; Omar Al Rashid; Noof Ahmed Alrefaei; Mayasa Al Sowaidi; Ebrahim Busaad; Balqees Fakhro; Mariam Fakhro; Taiba Faraj; Ghada Khunji and Ghassan Muhsin. The artists were chosen through an open call issued across the kingdom as early as this month—remarkable...