Monira Al Qadiri

Flower Drill

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Artwork Details

Artist

Monira Al Qadiri

Title

Flower Drill

Date

2016

Medium

Fibreglass and automotive paint

Dimensions

200 x 200 x 120 cm

Credit Line

Art Jameel Collection

Work Description

Flower Drill is a trio of sculptures which are wall-mounted and hung high, that recreate enlarged drill heads used in oil extraction technology. Made out of fibreglass, a material composed of petroleum-based plastics, and coated in dichroic automotive paint, they are reminiscent of a two-tone effect popular amongst custom car enthusiasts. While the sculpture’s dark iridescent surface mimics oil’s nacreous lustre—a quality it shares with pearls, the Gulf’s primary source of wealth before the discovery of oil—it also makes the drill’s futuristic design feel sinisterly alien. These monstrous blooms, petroculture recast as natural efflorescence, are prognostications, foretelling the inevitable destruction of the planet due to our reliance on fossil fuels. 

This work is a continuation of the artist’s exploration into the material and cultural legacy of oil extraction in the Arabian Gulf. Drawing aesthetic connections between the histories of pearl diving and oil, which have both been integral to the prosperity of the region to date, Al Qadiri creates fantastical forms that are both alluring and threatening. Al Qadiri’s multifaceted practice and dystopic vision seems to suggest that hyper-accelerated development, driven by oil, has produced a uniquely visual crisis, spectral in two ways. The recent past, remembered through images that are increasingly fugitive, can only haunt the present, which, enchanted by oil’s prismatic polychromatic twinkle, remains blind to its deleterious effects. And the future, despite the most conscientious and exhaustive of plans, may not last long enough.

Artist Biography

Monira Al Qadiri (b. 1983, Dakar, Senegal) lives and works in Berlin, Germany

Monira Al Qadiri is a visual artist whose work explores unconventional gender identities, petrocultures and their possible futures, as well as legacies of corruption. Spanning sculpture, installation, film and performance, her multifaceted practice is mainly based on research into the cultural histories of the Gulf region and manifested through speculative scenarios that take inspiration from science fiction, autobiography, traditional practices and pop culture, resulting in uncanny and covertly subversive works. Al Qadiri received a PhD in intermedia art from Tokyo University of the Arts (2010) and has been the subject of solo exhibitions at numerous international institutions, such as BOZAR, Brussels, SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, US (both 2024); De Balie, Amsterdam, UCCA Dune, Beijing and Kunstaus Bregenz (all 2023); Guggenheim Bilbao (2022); Hans der Kunst, Munich (2020); the Sursock Museum, Beirut and Gasworks, London (both 2017). She has participated in many biennials such as Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023) and 16 (2025); 24th Biennial of Sydney (2024): 59th Venice Biennale, the 1st Diriyah Contemporary Biennale and 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (all 2022), and the Asian Art Biennale, Taiwan (2021). Her videos and short films have been screened at MoMA, New York (2018); Rotterdam Film Festival (2018); Kunsthalle Schirn (2017), Le Centre Pompidou (2016) and Berlin International Film Festival (2014).

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