138 | MAY/JUN 2017 | ISSUE 103
DUBAI
The Third LineAt The Third Line gallery, in Dubai’s Alserkal
Avenue arts and culture district, Qatari-American
artist Sophia al-Maria interrogated submissive
consumerism in “Everything Must Go,” her first
solo exhibition in the United Arab Emirates. While
she reinterpreted work from her 2016 exhibition
“Black Friday” at New York’s Whitney Museum of
American Art, in which she introduced American
audiences to the culture of hyper-consumption
in the Arab Gulf region, Dubai’s backdrop offered
a new context for her work: there was no voyeuristic
glimpse of an exotic culture halfway around
the globe. For nationals and expatriates of the
Gulf nations, al-Maria’s show reflected lived
experiences, sparked by the artist’s adaptations
that both resonated with and unsettled
her audience.
The exhibition showcased the digital video
Black Friday (2016), which presented roving
images of the marble-laden luxury shopping
malls of Doha, replete with ornate columns
and patterned stone floors and walls. Together,
these architectural elements deliver a tomblike
atmosphere. Al-Maria’s footage is accompanied
by a male voice-over that intonates against the
evils of modern consumer culture and material
desire, set to blaring, menacing brass instruments
that suggest impending doom. The people
shown roaming a nearly empty mall are isolated:
a lone woman strides across the marble floors
with purpose until she reaches an escalator and
collapses onto it, lost in the windowless labyrinth
of retail chain stores, exhausted by the unending
drive to buy. In another scene, a father and son
gaze from left to right as they traverse a corridor in
the mall, mesmerized by the candy-colored LED
shop signs that beckon them. Near the conclusion
of the film, as the walls and ceiling of the mall
dissolve into clouds and sky, the transformation
is complete—this temple of consumption has
suspended reality.
The main gallery’s installation, Everything
Must Go (2017), exhibited advertising slogans
mixed with pop culture and military jargon, such
as “Laser Soul Removal,” “Post-Truth Plumper”
and “Beauty Industrial Complex,” superimposed
over saturated film stills of ominous scenes—a
collapsing building, a snarling wolf, military
officers. These framed images that lined the walls
and encircled the space conjure a false sense of
hope and security brought about by consumption,
while forcing the viewer to confront the reality
that this devouring is, at best, a distraction;
the feeling of relief is fleeting, while emptiness
endures. The center of this installation was a
cluster of shopping carts packed with junk food
familiar to anyone who grew up in the Gulf—Qatar
Pafki cheese curls, Mr. Krisps potato chips, mini
fruit jellies. The shiny, tinsel-tinged packaging
is meant to entice, but it contains empty calories
that offer brief satiation, not true nourishment.
Consuming these snacks would not assuage
our hunger. Closer scrutiny revealed even more
in the installation—recycled mobile phones
attached to the shopping carts. Flashing images
on their screens comprised the multi-channel
video The Litany (2016), which shows scenes of
environmental decay, commercial advertising
and war, echoing the packaging of disturbing
footage into convenient snippets for a public
conditioned to perceive news as entertainment;
our dissociation from this anguish allows for
unchecked escalation.
In a region that is both mind-bendingly
futuristic and deeply reverent of its traditional
Arabian Peninsula roots, the shopping mall
is a place of refuge and exile—one of instant
familiarity and complete dislocation. Retailers
now have identical stores in places as disparate
as Hong Kong, Dubai and New York, so a trip to
the mall places us both anywhere and nowhere
at the same time. Al-Maria confronts the social
and emotional corrosion that goes hand in hand
with modernity and global capitalism—isolation,
homogeny and loss of identity, which the artist
believes are most acutely experienced in shopping
malls. The viewer is deeply familiar with the
ubiquitous spaces and objects presented by
al-Maria, but her astringent interpretation jolts
us. Recognizing the savage reality of gratuitous
consumerism presents us with the opportunity to
resist its lulling call. This is al-Maria’s signal—she
removes the dazzling LEDs that veil our eyes and
injects agency into her viewers as they face the
all-consuming forces of globalization.
LESLEY ANN GRAYSOPHIA AL-MARIA
EVERYTHING MUST GO