For her current solo show at Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, Al-Maria created a new wall installation, together with a series of collages, that highlighted the breadth of the reference materials that go into her filmmaking and ruminations on what she has termed ‘Gulf Futurism’ and the capitalist sublime. This included artefacts of American pop culture, Arabic literature, punk cinema, childhood drawings and photographs relating to the artist’s childhood, spent between Washington State and the Middle East. The show also featured her trilogy Beast Type Song (2019), which was the subject of a solo at Turku Art Museum in Finland; Tender Point Ruin (2021); and Tiger Strike Red (2022), lo-fi sci-fi works that present possible futures haunted by imperialist pasts, dystopias threaded through with the hope of what she has called ‘counter-histories’. As the Emirates increases its footprint in the arts, Al-Maria has emerged as one of the region’s most prescient voices. Her interest in future ruins was evident too in the video she made for Miu Miu and the Italian fashion house’s Spring/Summer 2024 runway show.