The air is filled with gigantic shimmering forms, motionless yet bursting with energy. As we move around them, their surfaces shift in the changing light, revealing the spectrum of their colours. They are enormous iridescent jewels in which reflections become otherworldly.

Oil is everywhere: in your phone and your cosmetics, in the fuel tank of a jet, in the children's plastic lunch box, in your new shoes − even in your chewing gum. Petrochemicals, converted from oil, saturate our contemporary life through global industry, transportation and heating. What will a future without this peculiar liquid drawn from deep within the Earth’s crust be like?
Starting this autumn, ARKEN will present a major exhibition with Kuwaiti artist Monira Al Qadiri, who will install works throughout ARKEN's Art Axis: Floating sculptures shaped like petrochemical molecules, pearlescent, levitating drill heads and a video work where we see an oil refinery through the imagination of a child. 

Al Qadiri (b. 1983) was raised in Kuwait, where in one generation the main industry has changed from pearl fishing to oil-drilling. In her art, she merges ancient mythology with a vivid futurism − consistently questioning the normalisation of resource-extraction for profit and ‘petroculture’.  Al Qadiri creates a cosmos of many worlds and contradictions. Hostile, powerful oil drills become beautiful, dreamlike technologies in Future Past 3 and Alien Technology (Diamond) – pointing towards the sky instead of reaching into the earth. Whilst in Gastromancer, a pair of murex seashells float in a red atmosphere, contemplating both the ecstasy and melancholy of their biological transition in a contaminated environment. 

With whimsical humour, Al Qadiri often plays with scale to highlight the significance of her subject matter. In the series BENZENE FLOAT, she transforms petrochemical molecules into monumental structures. In the video work Crude Eye, she shrinks a colossal oil refinery to the size of a miniature model. Al Qadiri animates the invisible forces behind our current world order with playfulness and irony. What if the dinosaurs fossilised in petroleum millions of years ago began singing back to us? What if an oil refinery was actually a city of beings from other worlds? Most importantly she asks: What stories will we tell in the aftermath of oil? 

Biography 
Monira Al Qadiri (b. 1983) was born in Senegal, raised in Kuwait and educated in Japan. Today she lives and works in Berlin. Al Qadiri has described herself as a ‘mutant’ due to her cultural hybridity. As a child in Kuwait, she lived through the Gulf War and grew up next to oil refineries. Her art often combines aspects of hyper-visual culture of Japan with the poetic and literary traditions of the Middle East, moving fluidly between speculative fiction and history. She has recently held exhibitions in Kiasma Museum in Helsinki and Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, among many others. Her work has also been included in prestigious events such as Sharjah Biennial. This autumn, a large site-specific sculpture she created will be unveiled in Esbjerg Harbour. Find out more about the artist here.  

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The exhibition is supported by:
Augustinus Fonden
Ny Carlsbergfondet
Beckett Foundation
Statens Kunstfond