#107: Monira Al Qadiri

Beginning our fall season, Monira Al Qadiri presents a program of moving-image works centered on transnational narratives emanating from the Persian Gulf. A Kuwaiti artist born in Senegal and educated in Japan, Al Qadiri adopts a range of imaginative strategies to explore histories both personal and political. Arab soap operas, Gulf War–era images of burning Kuwaiti oil fields, traditional elegiac songs, and science fiction all figure in her astutely shape-shifting work, which foregrounds networks of capital and labor. Dark humor and melancholy alternatively drive the artist’s speculative, uncanny scenarios, which simultaneously look back at and probe possible futures for petrocultures and global political networks.

We look forward to welcoming Monira Al Qadiri showing:

The Craft, 2017, 16 min
Rumors of Affluence, 2012, 4 min
SOAP, 2014, 8 min
Wa Waila (Oh Torment), 2008, 10 min
Abu Athiyya (Father of Pain), 2013, 6 min
Travel Prayer, 2014, 2 min
Behind the Sun, 2013, 10 min
Divine Memory, 2019, 5 min – world premiere
Diver, 2018, video, 4 min

Monira Al Qadiri (born 1983) is a Kuwaiti visual artist born in Senegal and educated in Japan. In 2010, she received a Ph.D. in inter-media art from Tokyo University of the Arts, where her research was focused on the aesthetics of sadness in the Middle-East stemming from poetry, music, art and religious practices. Her work explores unconventional gender identities, petro-cultures and their possible futures, as well as the legacies of corruption. Monira is currently living and working in Berlin.