Innovative Curatorial Projects – Paris / SingaporeMonira al Qadiri
*1983, Senegal. Lives and works in Kuwait City, Kuwait.
Monira Al Qadiri is a Kuwaiti inter-media artist working with video, photography, performance and installation. She received her Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Tokyo University of Art in 2010. The themes of her work mainly deal with gender dysfunctionality within Arab society, and the displacement of cultural or religious identity due to over-communication and mass migration.
Oh torment (Wa Wailah) / Kuwait / 2008 / 10′ / 16:9
Oh Torment (Wa Waila) is a surreal film based on an old melancholic Kuwaiti folk song, whose words evoke a trance of sadness. Monira al Qadiri used this aesthetic as a metaphor for her film, interpreting it as a vehicle for personal grief: the film depicts love lost, displacement, gender identity and death in an extremely visual yet absurd manner. It can be described as visual poetry. The artist personally played the main male 'singer', and all the roles of men and women are swapped in the film.