Friday, 20 September 2019, 24:00 | midnight
#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. [read on]