Sophia Al-Maria

Director

Biography

Sophia Al Maria is an artist, writer and filmmaker. She studied comparative literature at the American University in Cairo, and aural and visual cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. For the past few years, she has been carrying out research around the concept of Gulf Futurism. Her primary interests are around the isolation of individuals via technology and reactionary Islam, the corrosive elements of consumerism and industry, and the erasure of history and the blinding approach of a fut…

Filmography

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Mirror Cookie

Al-Maria’s Mirror Cookie installation presents an intentionally disjointed monologue that references a self-help technique known as “mirror work.” It gradually develops into an impassioned improvisation delivered directly to the camera, as if the fourth wall she’s breaking is a reflection. As Bai Lings writes in one of her cookies, “We are our own mirror, reflecting the lights within.”

1.0

Tender Point Ruin

An exquisite corpse, the film extends the artist’s interests in the writings of Etel Adnan, the coming present and the personal as political.

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The Future Was Desert (Part II)

'Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time.' - J.G. Ballard

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A Whale Is A Whale Is A Whale

A tribute to the disappearing Arabian humpback whale population, tracing its near extinction as a consequence of the high-speed development of the Persian Gulf.

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The Future Was Desert

‘Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time.’ – J.G. Ballard

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The Magical State

A Wayuu woman is possessed by a 40 million-year-old oil demon.

8.5

Wayuu Creation Myth

A companion piece to The Magical State, Ziruma reveals the bloody Wayuu cosmogony.

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Tiger Strike Red

Remixing the collections of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Tiger Strike Red is an oneiric jaunt through an alternative art history that finds playful linkages between classical marble sculpture, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, representations of Judith’s beheading of Holofernes, AI art, and an 18th-century South Indian automaton depicting a tiger mauling a British colonial soldier.

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Beast Type Song

Etel Adnan's poem 'The Arab Apocalypse' from 1989 describes a future world in a state of emergency. The poem is the suggestive science fiction backdrop of Sophia Al-Maria's performative video work 'Beast Type Song', which is set in the abandoned space that previously housed Saint Martin's School of Art in London.

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Black Friday

Black Friday presents a hypnotic rendering of two large shopping malls in Doha that become a sacred sanctuary where the two protagonists, the artist and her sister, both wearing abayas, walk up and down endless escalators, in a sort of relentless procession inside immense empty and opulent marble-clad spaces. The title of the work refers to the Americanization of local customs: Black Friday, a day of unbridled shopping, is now widespread around the world. The final scene depicts the two women exhausted, stretched out on the sumptuous marble floor, representing the despair of mass consumerism.

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Not Really in Reality Reality TV

A surreal interview with Chinese-American actress Bai Ling, cast as a 'love goddess' and speaking on the subject of vengefulness.

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Fatima al Qadiri: Spiral ft. Bobo Secret

A belly dance-off mixing femme and masc in a sensual homage to the form.

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