Gulf Futurism
The essay "Gulf Futurism" by Laura Hindelang has been published in the exhibition catalogue Black Sun: Petroleum and Contemporary Art edited by Caroline Courrioux, Madeleine de Colney, Morad Montazami.
Laura Hindelang’s essay “Gulf Futurism” is now available in French and English in the exhibition catalogue of “Black Sun: Petroleum Contemporary Art / Soleil noir : Pétrole et art contemporain,” published by Zamân Books and the Villa Medici (Rome) for the exhibition on view from 9 October 2026 to 18 January 2027. The text is a translation of chapter 7.3 of her book Iridescent Kuwait. Petro-Modernity and Urban Visual Culture since the Mid-Twentieth Century (De Gruyter, 2022).
The essay looks at Gulf Futurism, a concept coined around 2008 by Sophia Al-Maria and developed with Fatima Al Qadiri, which reads the contemporary Gulf as a future that has already happened. She shows how it turns the Gulf’s image of skyscrapers, petrodollars and frozen “Bedouin” heritage into a dystopian preview of the petrocapitalist world and a warming planet. She also shows how it challenges the developmentalist narratives of national plans. The essay ends with Monira Al Qadiri’s work Alien Technology, an artistic entry point into the book’s reading of petromodernity as iridescence.
The catalogue was edited by Caroline Courrioux, Madeleine de Colnet and Morad Montazami. It also features essays by Lotte Arndt & David Castañer, Stephanie LeMenager, Andreas Malm, Salar Mameni, Amina Adebisi Odofin and Justinien Tribillon.
