21.3.–7.9.2025
5 floor
Tickets: with a museum ticket

Monira Al Qadiri’s art deals with what it feels like to live a modern life made possible by oil during the accelerating climate crisis.

Oil is everywhere in our everyday lives – in fuels, clothes, toys, make-up, buildings and roads. We use it to heat homes and the climate. Wars have been fought over it.

Oil’s dual role in generating wealth and causing crises is a central theme in the new exhibition by artist Monira Al Qadiri (b. 1983). The starting point for her new exhibition is the way that this raw material formed over millions of years has been almost surreptitiously interwoven into human history and destiny. The subject is personal for her: Al Qadiri grew up next door to oil refineries in Kuwait and experienced the Gulf War as a child.

The title, Deep Fate, refers to the origins of oil deep in the earth and also to the way that dependence on oil and breaking that dependence are a matter of life and death for humankind.

About the artist

Al Qadiri’s working process is based on research on the cultural history of the Persian Gulf region. The exhibition features sculptures and video works from the last decade. Some of them are very large, while the smallest are only a centimetre in diameter. Various sculptures echo the shapes of the blades and the molecular structures of the chemicals used in oil drilling. Al Qadiri’s works are characterised by iridescent rainbow colours that are reminiscent of oil and the shimmering surface of pearls.

In her video works, the artist often returns to her childhood experiences. For the child living close to an oil refinery, the industrial structure evoked thoughts of a glowing metropolis rather than of environmental destruction. Meanwhile, burning oil fields were her first conscious encounter with oil.

Al Qadiri’s works also contain references to the history of her family. Before the oil boom, one important source of livelihood in the region was pearl diving, in which her grandfather worked. In the 1950s, the oil industry lifted the small country of Kuwait out of poverty and into prosperity, and in so doing brought an end to the pearl-diving industry.

Monira Al Qadiri is one of the most important contemporary artists in the Gulf region. She was born in Senegal, grew up in Kuwait, and studied in Japan. Today, she lives and works in Germany.