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| Monira Al Qadiri | |
|---|---|
| Name | Monira Al Qadiri |
| Birth date | 1983 |
| Birth place | Dakar, Senegal |
| Nationality | Kuwaiti |
| Field | Visual art, film, performance, sculpture |
| Training | Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Tokyo Geidai, Design Academy Eindhoven |
Monira Al Qadiri Monira Al Qadiri is a Kuwaiti artist and filmmaker whose multidisciplinary practice explores petrochemical culture, gender performance, and transnational identity through sculpture, video, sound, and installation. Her work engages with histories of Gulf Cooperation Council, OPEC, and colonial extraction while intersecting with references to African, Arab, and East Asian artistic lineages. Al Qadiri's projects have been shown at major institutions including the Tate Modern, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
Born in Dakar to a family with ties to Kuwait City and Senegal, she grew up amid diasporic networks linking West Africa, Persian Gulf, and Japan. Her family background includes relatives associated with the oil sector in Kuwait and cultural figures connected to Beirut and Alexandria. She studied at Tokyo Geidai where she encountered Japanese avant-garde practices associated with Gutai and Mono-ha, before attending the Design Academy Eindhoven and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, learning from faculty with connections to Joseph Beuys-influenced pedagogy and contemporary theorists from Berlin and Amsterdam.
Al Qadiri emerged within a generation of artists that includes peers from Beirut and Doha who responded to post-2000 geopolitics and petro-modernity. Her early video and sound pieces circulated through festivals such as La Biennale di Venezia collateral programs and screenings at Locarno Film Festival and TIFF. Collaborations and exchanges have involved artists associated with Art Dubai, Sharjah Biennial, Documenta, and curators from Serpentine Galleries and The Barbican Centre. She has worked alongside filmmakers and musicians linked to Kourtrajmé, IDFA, Sundance Film Festival, and experimental labels connected to Warp Records and Sub Pop aesthetics.
Her notable projects interrogate petro-culture through objects and sound, referencing the histories of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and Kuwait within global capitalism shaped by OPEC decisions and the legacy of Suez Crisis. Major works include video pieces and sculptural installations that evoke oil rigs, refineries, and forms resonant with Kabuki and Noh masks, drawing parallels with performance traditions from Nigeria and Ghana. Themes encompass gendered embodiments and synthetic identities, engaging with artists such as Cindy Sherman, Marina Abramović, and Yayoi Kusama in discourse, while also dialoguing with theorists from Edward Said-inflected postcolonial critique and thinkers associated with Frantz Fanon and Homi K. Bhabha. The artist's use of sound references producers and composers from Kuwaiti pearl-diving chants to Japanese noise scenes, overlapping with experimental composers linked to John Cage and Steve Reich.
Al Qadiri has exhibited at institutions including the Tate Modern, Kunsthalle Basel, Stedelijk Museum, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Centre Pompidou, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. She has participated in biennials and triennials such as the Sharjah Biennial, dOCUMENTA (13), Venice Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Shanghai Biennale, Istanbul Biennial, and São Paulo Art Biennial. Residencies include programs at Gasworks, Kadist Art Foundation, Cité internationale des arts, The MacDowell Colony, and Villa Medici. Her work has been presented in gallery contexts from Gladstone Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery to Lehmann Maupin and Almine Rech.
Critics in publications such as Artforum, Frieze, The New York Times, The Guardian, and ArtReview have considered her practice within debates about petro-modernity and affective representation in contemporary art. Scholars from Oxford University, Harvard University, Columbia University, SOAS University of London, and Goldsmiths, University of London have referenced her work in analyses of global art networks and gendered performance. Curators from MoMA and The Whitney Museum of American Art have included her in thematic surveys addressing post-oil futures alongside artists from North Africa and the Levant. Her influence extends to younger practitioners across Doha, Manama, Tripoli, and Lagos engaging with material histories of extraction and diaspora.
Her pieces are held in public collections including the Tate Modern, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, and Walker Art Center. Public commissions and site-specific works have been produced for cultural institutions in Abu Dhabi, Doha, Istanbul, and Paris and for architecture projects associated with firms linked to Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects. Her works feature in university and municipal collections at Yale University Art Gallery, Carnegie Museum of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Rijksmuseum.
Category:Kuwaiti artists Category:Contemporary artists