Monira Al Qadiri: The Archeology of Beasts at BOZAR, Brussels

Internationally renowned artist Monira Al Qadiri is known for her playful yet subversive take on the Gulf region’s fading cultural histories, changing topographies and ecosystems, caused by the extractivist activities of the Petrostate nations.  The four newly commissioned works in this exhibition mark the start of a new visual direction for Al Qadiri, examining for the first time Ancient Egyptian myths and history. They nevertheless continue the artist’s exploration of the complex and ever so fragile relationship between nature, animals and humans, as well as the multi-layered power struggles that ensue. 

In the middle of the Royal Rotunda is Automaton, two ready-made sculptures of the anthropomorphic Egyptian animal deities Khnum and Anubis, facing each other while quietly rotating. Archaeology of Beasts is an immersive four-channel video installation, where the artist brings to life hundreds of souvenirs of gods and pharaohs found in the street markets of Luxor.  In the three-channel video installation Book of the Dead, we become witness to an existential conversation between the pharaoh Akhenaten and six interchanging gods: Hathor, Babi, Sekhmet, Seth, Horus and Sobek. Aaru: After Lament is Al Qadiri’s first Virtual Reality work combined with an installation of golden wheat. It transports us in the Ancient Egyptian afterlife, where the artist invites us to reflect on labour, loss and the circle of life. 

Hyper masculine figures, distorted bodies, and anthropomorphic animal forms dominate the works. Through her focus on the transformations from human to animal to divine, Al Qadiri interrogates who qualifies as human (and who as beast).

Al Qadiri: “Who qualifies as human? Who qualifies as beast? And is one’s life worth more than the other? Certainly today, these are pertinent questions – at a time when we are well aware that we need to rethink our relationship with nature and abandon the idea that we can control it.”  

She thus alludes to questions of otherness and, ultimately, to the methods of dominance that mankind has inflicted upon each other for centuries. Ancient Egypt has often been a site for the projection of cultural ideals, while shaped by geo-politics. For example, the hunt for treasures in Egypt in the early 19th century was a race between France and England in symbolically asserting their presence and commercial stronghold on the people and territories of the region. In light of the current unfolding of events in the Middle East, the Egyptian imagery that Al Qadiri uses in her work, with all the significance and history that it holds, subtly places the emphasis on human vanity and is an urgent call to respect all life. 

Al Qadiri adds: “I have recently been very preoccupied with the relationship between humans and animals. Nowadays, we live so segregated from each other that we are stunned when ‘wild’ animals suddenly appear in our streets and rivers during a pandemic. As if we had completely forgotten that these animals live in the same world. The difference with Ancient Egypt, where animals were depicted as gods, could not be greater.” 

Main Image: © Monira Al Qadiri