Art Basel's ‘Meet the artists’ series presents contemporary creatives shaping today’s cultural landscape.

Working across sculpture, installation, and video, Monira Al Qadiri explores the Gulf region’s shifting identities through forms that balance beauty and catastrophe. Born in Senegal and raised in Kuwait, she spent 16 years in Japan before settling in Berlin, where she continues to build a practice shaped by memory and transformation.

At the core of this practice, Al Qadiri’s opalescent works often draw on the Gulf’s transition from a pearl-diving economy to oil wealth, creating a visual bridge between historical eras. ‘I had this epiphany that actually the color of pearls and oil is the same color, but it’s on different sides of the color spectrum,’ she explains in this episode of ‘Meet the artists.’

This fascination with connecting seemingly disparate elements reflects her own multicultural background. ‘I think my work is very hybridized. It has this kind of literary Arab background, but also a hyper-visual Japanese aesthetic,’ she reflects, highlighting how her personal journey informs her artistic approach.

Through this hybrid lens, Al Qadiri’s iridescent sculptures transform industrial forms into seductive objects that embody dual extremes: ‘seduction through color and form’ alongside ‘destruction.’

Monira Al Qadiri works with Perrotin (Paris, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Seoul, Shanghai, Tokyo) and will open her first exhibition with the gallery in New York this September. Her solo exhibition ‘Deep Fate’ is on view at Kiasma Museum, in Helsinki, Finland, through September 7. Her solo exhibition ‘Burning Desire’ will open on May 10, 2025 at the Gothenburg Museum of Art in Sweden.