"Fast alles in der Welt hängt von dieser Substanz ab"
Artist Monira Al Qadiri presents her exhibition "Hero" at the Berlinische Galerie, focusing on oil tankers as central figures. The show explores the hidden violence and scale of the petroleum industry through a large wall painting of the supertanker Hero, miniature tankers with satirical names, and a video work depicting their destruction. Al Qadiri connects this to her long-term artistic investigation of oil's imagery and materiality.
Al Qadiri's work matters for its nuanced critique of our global dependency on fossil fuels, rooted in her childhood experience of the 1990-91 Gulf War in Kuwait, where she witnessed the burning of oil wells. Her art avoids didacticism, instead capturing the contradictory allure and toxicity of oil, and making visible an industry that often operates out of sight. The exhibition personalizes a global issue, linking collective memory, environmental damage, and the surreal aesthetics of petro-capitalism.