#holyquarter

Author: Magda Wisniowska – Munich, February, 2020.

Discussing the future The exhibition opening of Haus der Kunst’s ongoing Capsule program of focused one gallery exhibitions of international artists was preceded, as is customary, with a roundtable discussion between the artists and the curators. There were the usual questioning relating to the motives, themes, and ideas behind the work and each of the two artists, Sung Tieu and Monira Al Qadiri had the opportunity to speak. It was when asked by one of the curators to introduce the themes of her work, Al Qadiri said something unexpected regarding her upbringing in Kuwait—and having also grown up in Kuwait, I found it immediately striking. Al Qadiri said that in her work she often uses tropes associated with Kuwait’s pre-industrial past—the desert, pearl diving, camels—because as a Kuwaiti of the post-oil generation, these feel foreign to her. She is, of course, referring to a very familiar postcolonial experience, where the cultural practices different to the coloniser’s normative perspective become exotic, so much so, that for the colonised population, the Western counterpart to their indigenous culture might seem more normal than their own. Yet the term she used was not exotic or foreign, but “alien” in the sense of ‘the extra-terrestrial’ or ‘futuristic.’ What ought to have been part of her cultural heritage, was as distant and unrelatable as future planetary forces.  

The Local and the Philosophical I grew up outside Kuwait City in Fintas, in a newly-built modern block of flats close to the beach. Before it was demolished in the mid 80s, on the beach was a mosque and cemetery that we called “old” because it most likely dated from the 50s or 60s. Next to the mosque was a small harbour with fishing boats, around which sat elderly men, most former pearl divers, in small groups. One of these would bring his grandchildren with him and he taught us all how to swim by dragging a tin can in the water. This was 35 years ago. Roughly 35 years before, oil was discovered in Kuwait. In that short space of time, a new state was established, the old town almost completely demolished and a whole way of life destroyed. I recall this memory because the speed of change warrants our attention. Both the elderly man  and I were witness to an acceleration of the West’s project of enlightenment, not dissimilar to the kind described by Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani in ‘The Labor of the Inhuman.’ His brand of accelerationism urges the speeding up of man’s self-overcoming of reason through a continual interrogation of the category of the human. Interestingly in relation to Al Qadiri’s work, this type of rational and experimental labor Negarestani defines as “inhuman.” I would say Al Qadiri’s practice draws on the inhuman impulses lying at the heart of one specific nation’s economic and cultural development.

Alien Technology Al Qadiri’s capsule exhibition at Haus der Kunst consists of two pieces. The first looms large right as you enter, next to the staircase. It is one of Al Qadiri’s Alien Technology series, a massive fibreglass sculpture covered in shiny black iridescent paint. The work’s bulbous shape, which on the one hand, recalls a mythical artefact from a long lost ancient city, and on the other, science fiction, derives from the rotating teeth of an oilfield drill bit. Considering the oil industry’s importance, not only to Kuwait and its economy, but generally worldwide, its shape is relatively unknown and thus lends itself easily to speculation. In its previous smaller incarnations, the work’s connection to the sea was more prominent, its queer symmetry resembling that of a sea urchin or mollusc, but even at the large end of the scale as seen here at Haus der Kunst, the finish of its surface is pearl-like, like one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows. 

Holy Quarter Her second piece is the video work ‘Holy Quarter,’ a large scale projection accompanied by a number of smaller glass spherical forms, their smooth surfaces marred - or ornamented, as the case may be - by spikes, nodes and tubercles. The video is of the desert, the so called ‘Empty Quarter’ encompassing much of the southern Arabian peninsula, spreading across the Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. A landscape of ever-shifting sand dunes and gravel plains, its stark bareness comes as a shock even to those accustomed to the desert environments of Omani wadis, Saudi mountain ranges, or even Kuwait’s more modest ridges. As Al Qadiri shows, negotiating this landscape is profoundly disorientating. Early scenes of the cliffs at sunset are followed by views from above and within the earth, so that distance becomes uncertain and we can no longer tell the far from the near. The images are narrated by a disembodied voice, very slowly relating the tale of early 20th century arabist and explorer, Harry St. John Bridger Philby. In 1932 Philby set out to look for the mythic city of Ubar—for him, Wabar—but instead of finding the missing city, after many days of wandering he discovered what he thought was a volcano. In fact, he stumbled across the site of a meteor impact, the surrounding ground littered with black glass and chunks of iron meteorite. Al Qadiri’s narrative identifies the mythic beings of Wabar with the extra terrestrial nature of the meteorite. As the voice states, “We are Wabar, We are the body of dust… We crashed into the sand.” Philby is the “pale man” who “walked across the desert and disturbed our sleep.” In her narrative Al Qadiri also refers to the other famous shooting star, that is seen by the three wise men, and to the frankincense associated with them. Finally there is mention of the discovery of oil in the region, the “black pearl” that threatens the “cradle of life.”