Statement / Bio
Ru Alum, Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is an artist, poet, and theorist whose work explores the interplay between aesthetic and political valences in the public domain. Her work, they built for eternity was commissioned as part of the Gulf Labor Working Group, for their campaign, “52 Weeks,” a one-year effort whereby contributors delivered a work, text, or action each week, taking as their starting point the exploitation of workers building Abu Dhabi’s premier cultural institutions. Gharavi’s work drew inspiration from older legacies of labor in the service of cultural enterprise, such as full-spread advertisements with headlines like “In Ancient Egypt, They Built for Eternity” (from which her work takes its name) mythologizing ceaseless, unified manual labor through Orientalizing fantasies.
Gharavi’s past exhibitions, performances, and expanded publications include Nottingham Contemporary, Pioneer Works, Parasol Unit, Serpentine Cinema, Framer Framed, Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Art Dubai, New Museum, Pacific Film Archive, Sonic Acts, Triple Canopy, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, The Poetry Project, Women and Performance, The White Review, Art in America, The Literary Review, Asymptote, among others. She was previously an artist-in-residence at Residency Unlimited (U.S.A.), Industry Lab (U.S.A.), Delfina Foundation (U.K.), Darat al Funun (Jordan), and Mansion (Lebanon). She completed a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Film & Visual Studies at Harvard University and an M.F.A. in Film/Video at Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, and held a postdoctoral Fulbright and Visiting Professorship at Birzeit University.
Artist interview: Canceled Texts: An Interview with Maryam Monalisa Gharavi