Munirah Almehri
Umbai

Exhibition Details

In Kuwaiti slang the word Umbai expresses a statement of surprise at the absurd and unexpected. It is reserved only for the tongues of Kuwaiti women so much that if a man simply utters the word, they are accused of being gay. The word represents how dominant discourses regulate gender and sexuality in modern-day Kuwaiti society. In this context, artist Munirah Almehri has been interested in the ways that queer futurism becomes a crucial tool for those denied a future under the hetero-patriarchy. Operating through the anonymous, the absurd, the stereotypical, the ultra-binary, and the phantasmic, the author has created five characters in their own idealistic worlds to portray the potentiality of other ways of being. Manoeuvring between documentary photography and constructed self-portraits, the work depicts a culturally-bound expression of queer idealism.