Monira Al Qadiri, born in 1983 in Kuwait and of Senegalese origin, was trained in Japan. She lives and works in Berlin. Her practice—spanning sculptures, installations, films, and performances—is grounded in in-depth research into the cultural history of the Gulf region. Her interpretation of the Gulf’s “petroculture” emerges through speculative scenarios drawing on science fiction, autobiography, and traditional practices.

She has notably exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018), the Kunsthalle Basel (2023), the Taipei Biennial (2021), and the Sharjah Biennial (2023 and 2025).

Oh Body of Mine

Monira Al-Qadiri’s Oh Body of Mine (2025) is a film shot at the shipbreaking yards of Chittagong, Bangladesh, one of the world’s main sites where end-of-life ships are beached and dismantled. The film follows the journey of decommissioned supertankers, once symbols of economic power and the global flow of resources, now reduced to carcasses that are cut up and recycled by hand.

The film is accompanied by a spoken adaptation of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem Le Bateau ivre. This text, which initially evokes a free and visionary journey, is here subverted: the ship’s movement no longer leads to adventure, but to its dismantling. This poetic inversion reinforces the tragic nature of the image, transforming the maritime epic into a tale of end and disintegration.

Through these images, the artist sheds light on the “shameful secret” of global trade: the industry’s environmental and social consequences are largely offloaded onto countries in the Global South, while the profits flow elsewhere. Workers, often exposed to dangerous and precarious conditions, play a direct role in the destruction of these massive infrastructures, physically embodying the human costs of the global economy.

The work emphasizes the materiality of bodies: those of ships, water, and humans, all subjected to forms of tension, wear, and transformation. Each oil tanker appears as an organism whose life cycle, from construction to destruction, mirrors that of the resources it carries.

This video offers a powerful reflection on cycles of production and degradation on a global scale. It invites us to consider the flip side of energy infrastructure and to recognize the often-invisible interdependencies that structure our contemporary world.

Seasons in Hell (Sea of Flames)

With Seasons in Hell (Sea of Flames), Monira Al Qadiri offers a reflection on the imaginaries associated with the oil economy and the tensions that run through it. The work takes the form of a handmade model of an oil tanker, displayed on a pedestal. With its small size and almost playful appearance, the object evokes a harmless toy, in stark contrast to the gigantic supertankers capable of transporting millions of barrels of oil across the oceans.

This shift in scale is a central element of the artist’s approach. By miniaturizing these industrial behemoths, she makes the scale of the fossil fuel economy and its global networks perceptible at a single glance. This tension between the toy and the titan reveals what Al Qadiri refers to as a “politics of scale”: a way of questioning our ability to grasp phenomena of such magnitude.

In place of the industrial logos usually visible on these ships, the hull is covered with fragments of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem A Season in Hell (1873). Phrases such as “Pure brutality,” “Sea of flames,” or “Boiling metals” appear as warning signs. Inscribed on this miniature surface, they introduce a poetic and critical dimension, transforming the ship into a medium for language.

These words encapsulate the ambivalence of oil: a source of wealth, mobility, and comfort, but also a driver of environmental destruction and social inequality. The oil tanker thus becomes a floating symbol of the contradictions of fossil-fuel capitalism. Straddling fascination and concern, the installation invites us to rethink the narratives surrounding our dependence on fossil fuels, revealing the often-hidden realities they conceal.