Where fantasy and reality meet, Sophia Al Maria sits
“What if I told you, you aren’t the hero in your own story but the villain in someone else’s?”
Miu Miu collaborated with the groundbreaking Qatari-American artist, writer and filmmaker Sophia Al Maria, to unearth the answer. The Italian fashion house’s Spring/Summer’24 collection set out to explore the vastness of beauty in all its multitudes. On the runway walked straightforward, no-nonsense pieces with a backdrop of technological ruins though Al Maria’s “Gravity & Grace” video.
Fascinated by post-apocalyptic worlds Al Maria addresses the interaction between lively beauty and disarray ruins in her work. Coining the term “Gulf Futurism” she emulates her upbringing in the post-oil Persian Gulf, her undergraduate pursuit in Cairo and beyond, in her body of work. Consequential in voice, she fascinates the world with her biting pieces.
CREATING DYSTOPIAN AWE
In collaboration with OMA, the short film illuminated the halls of Palais d’Iéna adding yet another dimension to a collection that centers womanhood and beauty in an authentic way. Starring the stuntwoman Ayesha Hussain, in superhero attire, she draws a sword and rings back her arrows, prepared for a fight. In her signature hellish utopian style, she presents the daily battles of existence that woman are held to.
Trapped where fantasy and reality meet live the stories that remain untold. The ideas of beauty, the tensions of womanhood and the juxtaposition of past and present. Al Maria seeks to unravel the hidden gems of what sits on both of ends of the spectrum. With a whisper of humour and an indulgence she builds work that is here to stay and birth awe.
WHO IS SOPHIA AL MARIA?
Al Maria was born to an American mother and Qatari father and grew up between both countries. She spent her formative years in Seattle before relocating to her father’s home country of Qatar, eventually going on to study in Cairo, Egypt and then in London at Goldsmith University.
The pains of adjusting to worlds that don’t belong to you are extensively explored in Al Maria’s literature and art. In her 2012 memoir The Girl Who Fell To Earth explores its joys, too. “Actually I think it’s less of a big deal than we all think,” she previously remarked in an interview with The National.
In the memoir she watches as her extended Bedouin family grapples with the loss of certain identities as they gain host culture’s customs. While the opposite happens for the family members who are assimilating to the new presence of Qatari family in their space.
From creating new genres to exploring our world’s shortcomings, Sophia Al Maria is an artist that has long parted with constraints. Indulging, observing and questioning, her art unearths the past and repaints the future.
From the Grazia Magazine website
