Tuesday, July 1

I intended going to Amos Rex to see the exhibition there, but I arrived to find that they shut on Tuesdays. I therefore walk over to Kiasma where I have seen some of the exhibitions, but not all of them. I go to the very top floor and walk carefully around Monira Al Qadiri’s installations and paintings, collectively called Deep Fate. I learn that

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.

I go downstairs and walk through the other floors, but I find nothing more interesting, with the single exception of some work by Eeva Karhu, whose photographics I like both for their technique and the resulting imagery.