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    Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag

     
    Upper Level Galleries
    July 22, 2023 - January 14, 2024
    Sophia Al-Maria's work interrogates the enduring orientalist gaze and residual histories of resource extraction and colonial authority in the context of contemporary culture and society. Not My Bag brings together Al-Maria’s recent trilogy of films and new collages that grapple with the violence of empire across individual and generational time scales, and animate the persistence of the rebellious, creative spirit amid the ruins of crisis. This will be Al-Maria’s first exhibition in the Pacific Northwest, a region central to shaping the artist’s youth and the trajectory of her art practice.
    Al-Maria’s film trilogy includes BEAST TYPE SONG (2019), TENDER POINT RUIN (2021), and TIGER STRIKE RED (2022), and features a recurring cast of friends and fellow artists who play both themselves and scripted characters. Al-Maria weaves together personal lore and geopolitical legend by using film genre ranging from science fiction and horror to adventure, as her material. Her resulting films are multi-layered and unspool the power dynamics of writing history with only unreliable narrators to tell it. These counter-narratives confront problems of erasure and misrepresentation and create portals to envision alternative futures. 
    The title, Not My Bag, is a dynamic expression of Al-Maria’s approach to history, writing, and language, evoking a colloquial phrase of disavowal, and simultaneously alluding to Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” in which Le Guin advocates for writing narratives that hold the multiplicity of human experience. The metaphor of the bag recurs throughout Al-Maria’s work and points to her refusal of monolithic hero stories in favor of narratives that enfold the entangled relationship between pain and beauty and grapple with the complex, continual process of being and existing together on Earth.
    During the first year of the COVID-19 lockdown, Al-Maria returned to her first loves of drawing and collage. What emerged were “paper videos,” which often complement the subject matter in her films and explore the ways cultural inheritance, fragmentation, and memory shape narrative and a sense of self. For this exhibition at the Henry, Al-Maria made a site-specific installation titled Al Atlal (2023), which collects together photography, excerpts from reference texts, film production ephemera, and other precious remains of the often-invisible work that goes into making the art itself. This spread of materials extends across the gallery walls, creating an impression but no clear outline of the creative process. These references include Arabic literature, American pop culture, and experimental punk cinema, alongside childhood drawings and photographs related to Al-Maria’s experience of growing up between Washington State and the Middle East. This nonlinear storyboard is composed of the remnants of Al-Maria’s life and work since leaving both her homes to immigrate to the United Kingdom. It maps her capacious view of the world forged across national borders, offering a way to reckon with the past and find pathways to survive in the present.

    VISITOR ADVISORY: Please note that one of the videos in this exhibition, BEAST TYPE SONG, contains strobing lights. Transcripts of all videos are available as hard copies and via a QR code in the galleries, as well as under “Related Content” on this page.

    Artist Bio

    Sophia Al-Maria (b. 1983 in Tacoma, WA; lives and works in London) is a Qatari-American artist, writer, and filmmaker. Al-Maria has had solo exhibitions at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Qatar; the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; the Tate Britain, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; among other institutions. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London; LUMA Arles, France; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the New Museum, New York; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing; La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy; and numerous other venues. She has been writer in residence at the Whitechapel Gallery, London. She is the author of three books: Sad Sack (Book Works, London, 2019), Virgin with a Memory (Cornerhouse Publications, Manchester, 2014), and The Girl Who Fell to Earth (Harper Perennial, New York, 2012).
    CREDITS

    Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag is organized by Nina Bozicnik, Curator. Generous support is provided by the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. Media sponsorship provided by KUOW.


    Related Content

    • Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag Reading Area Bibliography

    • Film Transcript: TIGER STRIKE RED

    • Film Transcript: BEAST TYPE SONG

    • Film Transcript: TENDER POINT RUIN

    Related Programs

    <p>Sophia Al-Maria,&nbsp;<em>Al Atlal</em>&nbsp;[detail], 2023. Site-specific installation of artist ephemera. Courtesy of the artist and Project Native Informant, London. Installation view of&nbsp;Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag, 2023, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. Photo: Jueqian Fang.</p>
    Programs

    Teen ArtVenture: Collage Construction with Sophia Al-Maria

    January 13, 2024
    <p><em>Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag</em>&nbsp;[Installation view, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. 2023]. Photo: Jueqian Fang.</p>
    Talks & Performances

    Being a Career Artist: A conversation with Sophia Al-Maria

    January 12, 2024
    <p>Sophia Al-Maria,<em>&nbsp;Al Atlal&nbsp;</em>[detail], 2023. Site-specific installation of artist ephemera. Courtesy of the artist and Project Native Informant, London. Installation view of&nbsp;Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag, 2023, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. Photo: Jueqian Fang.</p>
    Talks & Performances

    In Conversation: Sophia Al-Maria and Arbella Bet-Shlimon

    January 11, 2024
    <p>Installation view of&nbsp;<em>Raúl de Nieves: A window to the see, a spirit star chiming in the wind of wonder&hellip; </em>Photo: Jonathan Vanderweit.</p>
    Events

    UW Family Weekend

    October 20, 2023 – October 21, 2023
    <p><em>Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag</em> [Installation view, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. 2023]. Photo: Jueqian Fang.</p>
    Events
    Public Opening: Fall Exhibitions
    September 29, 2023
    <p>Sophia Al-Maria, <i>BEAST TYPE SONG</i>, 2019. Single-channel video (color, sound); 38:03 mins. Courtesy of the artist, Anna Lena Films, Paris and Project Native Informant, London. Installation view of&nbsp;<i>Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag</i>, 2023, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. Photo: Jueqian Fang.
</p>
    Events
    Patron Preview: Fall Exhibitions
    September 29, 2023
    <p>Sophia Al-Maria, <em>Al Atlal</em>, 2023. Site-specific installation of artist ephemera. Courtesy of the artist and Project Native Informant, London. Installation view of <em>Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag</em>, 2023, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle. Photo: Jueqian Fang.</p>
    Tours

    Meet the Curator of Sophia Al-Maria: Not My Bag

    November 12, 2023
    Tours

    Henry Art Liaison Tours

    November 16 - December 14, 2023