About

• Sophia Al-Maria is a Qatari-American artist, whose work is inspired by a range of sources including pop culture, anime, science fiction, cinema and literature.
• Her profound interest in relics and ruins was originally kindled during her studies of Arabic literature, where she found that abandoned sites and discarded utensils could offer a rich poetic motif. In her own visual chronicles, Al-Maria construct complex, interwoven narratives that cut across ancient civilizations, mythologies, and childhood memories.
• Assembled like meditations or daydreams, Al-Maria creates visual collages made from snippets of memory and imagination. Her work connects with the viewer, revealing something universally intimate, honest, vulnerable and, ultimately, representative of a collective subjectivity of human experience.
• Al-Maria combines found objects, oral histories, and artefacts to produce a revisionist vision of a post-colonial society, shaped by technology, consumerism and environmental concerns. Working closely with the artist Fatima Al-Qadiri, Al-Maria co-coined the term "Gulf Futurism", which describes the growing social fragmentation caused by economic and technological changes that have come to shape the post-oil Gulf region into a futuristic Western utopia.
• In her most recent body of work, Al-Maria follows CNN finance reporter Richard Quest on his daily routines in and around the hectic New York Stock Exchange. She is fascinated by Quest's charismatic personality and - particularly - by his ability to navigate between the professional and personal versions of himself under the unflinching scrutiny of the rolling TV cameras that follow his every move.