Abu Dhabi Art commissions artist Monira Al Qadiri for visual campaign

The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi Art have announced that artist Monira Al Qadiri has been commissioned to provide works for the visual campaign of Abu Dhabi Art 2018.

Al Qadiri 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 focused on the aesthetics of sadness in the Middle-East stemming from poetry, music, art and religious practices. Her work explores petro-cultures and their possible futures. The visual campaign will draw on images from her series of sculptural works entitled Spectrum 1 & 2, Amorphous Solid Ghost, and Alien Technology. Selected works from these series will be on display at Abu Dhabi Art in November 2018.

Commenting on the artist commission for 2018, Abu Dhabi Art Director Dyala Nusseibeh said, "Monira Al Qadiri is a fascinating artist and we are excited to be collaborating with her for this year’s edition of Abu Dhabi Art. Her oil drill sculptures, painted with pearlescent hues, are compelling. Re-presented out of context, they allude to a fictional archeologist in an imagined future, unearthing artifacts of beauty. We are asked to consider the Gulf in the ‘post-contemporary’ – to imagine a world that has moved beyond oil consumption and forgotten its pearl diving heritage, a future in which the tools of our time have become obsolete objects of beauty. There is an underlying urgency to these works as much as an alchemy. We look forward to showing them in November 2018."

Commenting on her collaboration with Abu Dhabi Art, Al Qadiri said, "I am honoured to be featured in this year's edition of Abu Dhabi Art. My work attempts to blend past, present and future in the Gulf, and I feel this is a perfect opportunity to highlight and reflect on these topics."

Returning from November 14th to 17th, 2018, Abu Dhabi Art, organised by the Department of Culture and Tourism - Abu Dhabi, will offer a diverse programme of exhibitions, commissions, performances, and events which bring together the world’s leading galleries, artists, cultural thinkers, collectors and visitors from across the globe.

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