Sophia Al-Maria: Black Friday

Sophia Al-Maria (b. 1983) is part of an emerging generation of international artists who are mining the intersections of technology, culture, and identity. In 2016, she will receive her first solo museum show in the country with the premiere of a new series of videos at the Whitney.

Her exhibition is inspired by the Gruen Transfer, a phenomenon in which a controlled environment—combined with visual and auditory stimuli—is used to distract and manipulate consumers. Over the past nine years, Al-Maria has been finding ways to describe 21st-century life in the Arabian Gulf through art, writing, and filmmaking. Her first solo exhibition, Virgin with a Memory, was presented at Cornerhouse, Manchester, in 2014 and her memoir, The Girl Who Fell to Earth, was published by Harper Perennial in 2012.

Credit: Exhibion overview from the Whitney Museum website

Whether you go or ot, Sophia Al-Maria's memoir, The Girl Who Fell to Earth: A Memoir , is a funny and wry coming-of-age memoir about growing up in between American and Gulf Arab cultures. Al-Maria shares the struggles of being raised by an American mother and Bedouin father while shuttling between homes in the Pacific Northwest and the Middle East. Part family saga and part personal quest, The Girl Who Fell to Earth traces Al-Maria’s journey to make a place for herself in two different worlds.