“Al Qadiri’s practice has been invested in acknowledging that our global culture is fundamentally a petroculture, in that the material basis of modern societies is petroleum. This culture is so pervasive as to be insidiously normative, without us having the critical distance to clearly see our problematic dependency on the substance.”

Publication: “Viscous Entanglements,” in Refined Vision: Monira Al Qadiri, 10-19, edited by Tyler Blackwell. Houston TX: Blaffer Art Museum and Inventory Press, 2025.

Keywords: art, contemporary, artist, Monira Al Qadiri, catalogue, text, essay, film, video, installation, sculpture, exhibition, oil, petroleum, dependency, plastic, extraction, environment, degradation, climate, pollution, destruction, colonialism, post-colonial, history, nationhood, identity, Kuwait, Iraq, Gulf, Southwest Asia, Arab world

Image: Monira Al Qadiri, Haus der Kunst, Maximilian Geuter