Monira AL QADIRI (Kuwait City & Tokyo)

SOAP, 2014, single-channel video, color, sound, 8:10 min.

The figure of a maid is superimposed onto scenes from Gulf-region television dramas, creating a depiction of reality generally erased from representations of popular culture and the central role that South Asian migrant workers play in maintaining daily life in class-based societies, prevalent also within the developed nations of the Pacific Rim.

About the artist:

Monira Al Qadiri explores dysfunctional gender roles and the relationship between narcissism and masculinity in her work. Now expanding her practice towards more social and political subjects, she received a Ph.D. in inter-media art from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2010, where her research focused on the aesthetics of sadness in the Middle-East region stemming from poetry, music, art and religious practices. Monira is part of the artist collective GCC, which recently held a solo exhibition at MoMA PS1, New York. She has recently had solo exhibitions at Sultan Gallery in Kuwait (2011 & 2014) and her videos and short films have been screened in several collective international exhibitions.