Artists
Sophia Al-Maria’s (1983, Tacoma, United States) work lies at the intersection of cinema, installation, drawing and writing. It is based on personal experiences to address issues such as historical narrative, cultural identity and technology impact. For years, she has been researching social and urban change in the Gulf countries, questioning how narratives are built inside and outside the region. Together with musician Fatima Al Qadiri, she coined the term ‘Gulf Futurism’ to describe a landscape marked by fragmentation, accelerated development and the effects of post-oil capitalism. Many of her works dialogue with ideas of post-humanism by showing how the body, the language and the perception are altered by technological devices and contexts of surveillance. Her videos, for example, represent not only human realities, but also states of transition, alienation or splitting that refer to transhumanist debates about identity and the limits of one’s body.
