’Chameleon’ at ARKEN is Monira Al Qadiri’s largest solo exhibtion exhibits to date. Here is Monira’s own words about her art works and artistic practice.

My practice for the past decade (and slightly longer) has been focused on the topic of oil. As someone from Kuwait, I feel I have a biographical almost biological relationship to this substance that I see as a kind of sentient being in itself - a genie or monster or alien that has landed in our world and refuses to leave. It has revolutionized the way we live in the modern era, but is also slowly but surely destroying us and everything around us as we speak.

All of my works displayed in this exhibition contain this dilemma or inherent sense of dichotomy. Two opposing sides existing in one body.

On the outside the works may look shiny colorful and fun, but they are also hiding a disturbing message about us humans: they reflect our decadence, hubris, nonchalance and indifference towards our own suffering and the suffering of other species that share this earth with us. Will divine punishment befall us in the name of climate change? As an artist I don’t have any answers to these questions.

Truthfully my work is not a form of action or activism nor is it overtly critical or didactic. I am merely trying to create new emotional landscapes through which we can experience this subject differently and from different perspectives. I believe that tragedy is an important part of human experience and at times we must confront and embrace it.

So I want you all to feel these works rather than think about them with a rational mind.

I believe that as lay people in face of this monstrous and ever changing capitalist industrial force, this behemoth that operates in realms beyond human imagination and human scale, our strongest weapon now is to feel.

In the center of the exhibition you will experience by installation Gastromancer which is a conversation between two transformed beings.

As the great Persian poet Hafiz once said:
“Art is the conversation between lovers.
Art offers an opening for the heart.
Art makes the divine silence in the soul break into applause.”
Or in my case, it breaks into tears.

Monira Al Qadiri’s speech at the opening of Chameleon at ARKEN on 13.11.25

Bio:
Monira Al Qadiri is born in Kuwait and educated from Tokyo University of the Arts with a Ph.D. in Intermedia Art. Today she lives and works in Berlin.
Oil plays a big part in her artworks, where she moves between fiction og her own history.
She often combines elements from Japan’s hyper-visual culture with Arabic poetic and literary traditions in her art.
Monira Al Qadiri describes herself as ”post-oil-baby” beacuse in just one generation people in Kuwait went from being pearl divers to being transformed by the oil industry. This is also reflected in Monira Al Qadiri’s exhibition, Chameleon.

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Sources

Moniraalqadiri.com