Kuwaiti visual artist Monira Al Qadiri takes inspiration from a wide range of sources: petro-culture in the Gulf states, science fiction, video games, music videos, pearl diving, poetry and soap operas, to name just a few. She distils and refines these sources into artworks and installations that explore gender identities, speculative futures and the legacies of corruption. The sister of musician and artist Fatima Al Qadiri (both founders of Gulf art collective GCC), she completed a PhD on inter-media art focusing on the aesthetics of sadness in the Middle East and has gone on to exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Gasworks in London and most recently at this year’s Venice Biennale (a series of 3-D printed floating sculptures inspired by drill bits used in oil extraction).