Monica Al Qadari @ Gasworks

The Craft is the first UK solo exhibition by Amsterdam-based artist Monira Al Qadiri. The exhibition includes a short, semi-autobiographical science fiction film, sculptures and photographs in which international diplomacy is envisaged as an alien conspiracy. Under this umbrella, embassies, conferences, cultural exchange and political activism are represented as elaborately staged ways to conceal diplomats’ true dealings with the third kind. Poking fun at collapsing postcolonial empires, these works also explore how the current rise of nationalism and political populism trivialises formerly common ways of being international in the world, depicting the era of diplomatic rituals, national grandeur and political grandstanding as a nostalgic and lovable ‘other world’ beyond reach.

Co-commissioned by Gasworks and the Sursock Museum, Beirut with support from Shubbak: A Window on Contemporary Arab Culture, 1–16 July 2017.