MONIRA AL QADIRI
DEEP FATE

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART KIASMA, HELSINKI, FINLAND
21 MARCH – 7 SEPTEMBER 2025

Oil is everywhere in our everyday lives – in fuels, clothes, toys, make-up, buildings, and roads. We use it to heat homes and the climate. Wars have been fought over it.Oil’s dual role in generating wealth and causing crises is a central theme in the new exhibition by artist Monira Al Qadiri. The starting point for her new exhibition is the way that this raw material, formed over millions of years, has been almost surreptitiously interwoven into human history and destiny. The subject is personal for her: Al Qadiri grew up next door to oil refineries in Kuwait and experienced the Gulf War as a child.The title, DEEP FATE, refers to the origins of oil deep in the earth and also to the way that dependence on oil and breaking that dependence are a matter of life and death for humankind.

© Photos: Finnish National Gallery / Petri Virtanen

FEATURED ARTIST

MONIRA AL QADIRI
Monira Al Qadiri (b. 1983) is a Kuwaiti visual artist born in Senegal and educated in Japan. Spanning sculpture, installation, film, and performance, Al Qadiri’s multifaceted practice is based on research into the cultural histories of the Gulf region. Her interpretation of the Gulf’s so-called “petro-culture” is manifested through speculative scenarios that take inspiration from science fiction, autobiography, traditional practices, and pop culture, resulting in uncanny and covertly subversive works that destabilize mythologies of statecraft and modernization as well as traditional notions of gender. Tracing the delicate ecologies threate...
Read more