Photo by Valeria Cherchi

As a child growing up in Kuwait in the 1990s, Fatima Al Qadiri had the kind of utopian access to global entertainment that still seems out of reach in the West, even in today’s golden age of boundless media. Thanks to Kuwait’s lenient piracy laws, she and her sisters were able to beam in cartoons and versions of MTV from every corner of the globe, absorbing a glut of information that instilled her with a worldly curiosity and a sensitivity to foreign culture that informs the expansive work she does today as a visual artist and producer.

Rather than share the media-saturated days of her childhood in a maximalist outpouring, however, Al Qadiri crystallizes her rogue education into precise, refined works. Following a trio of EPs—Desert Strike, Genre-Specific Xperience, and WARN-U, an homage to Muslim anthems that she recorded as Ayshay—she’ll release her debut album Asiatisch through Hyperdub on May 5. The record, which toys with Western perceptions of China in pop culture, is both Al Qadiri’s most conceptually ambitious and cohesive release yet; she’s taken her trademark minimalist bass sound and delicately woven in uncanny references to Asian culture as filtered through a deeply American lens.

On “Dragon Tattoo”, for instance, she sings lyrics that subtly spin lines from Lady and the Tramp’s highly recognizable “We Are Siamese” into a R&B ballad. Another track, “Wudang”, is named for the mountainous region that inspired the kung fu-obsessed Wu-Tang Clan. The song uses a warped vocal sample of an ancient Chinese poem called “Peach Tree Tender”, conveying something eerie and intangible but perversely melodic and accessible nonetheless. “I envisioned it to be a Chinese mall in the mountains of Wudang, manned by these ancient Chinese robots,” Al Qadiri tells me about "Wudang", laughing a bit at her own hallucinatory imaginings. “It’s a really evil song.”

We’re sitting in a high-ceilinged private library/conference space at MoMA PS1, where the seed for the record’s concept was planted during a collaboration with an art collective called Shanzhai Biennial. The 32-year-old, who splits her time between London and New York when she's not traveling elsewhere, is calm and elegantly professorial, sporting an aqua-blue sateen Starter jacket over a white t-shirt and clicking her long, translucent nails together for conversational emphasis. 

Pitchfork: How would you describe the overall concept behind Asiatisch?

Fatima Al Qadiri: I wanted to make a record based on this idea of the presence of Asian motifs in Western music, whether it’s in rap, classical, TV, cartoons. I feel like I’ve been listening to and soaking in these Asian motifs in Western music for a long time, so this record is like a virtual road trip through “imagined China.” It’s not the real China. I’ve never been to China. I only know what the West is telling me about China. 

One track on the album is called “Szechuan”, which is the colonial spelling [of the region of China]. The current non-colonial version of it is “Sichuan.” I spelled it the colonial way because that’s how it appears in Chinese restaurants across the world. And it’s my Chinese-restaurant track. There’s this idea that Chinese food in China is different than the Chinese food that you find in the West. There’s an illusion—you know what Chinese food tastes like, but then when you go to China, you’re shocked. You come to terms with reality.



Pitchfork: There’s a tendency for artists to handle foreign culture sloppily or insensitively, but you seem to do it very delicately.

FAQ: I only have a Bachelor’s Degree but I’ve had professors who have instilled this kind of academic rigor in me where I don’t make any generalizations or closed statements. There always has to be room for interpretation. This record is about this idea of: What is Asian? I am Asian. Kuwait is in Asia. But it’s also not. I want to ask the questions: Why have I been exposed to imagined China for all these years? Why is no one talking about imagined China? That “We Are Siamese” song in Lady and the Tramp is undisputably racist. But that somehow has come full circle over the years, and stereotypes become more and more dislocated from their original venom.

I also had a story-telling mother; she’s written novels and short stories. So I feel like maybe I’m staying alive by telling tales. And I want to instill some kind of rigor in the ideas behind this music. There’s a very corny idea that music is cinematic somehow, but that’s what I’m trying to achieve. My music doesn’t exist in a vacuum; there’s a script and there’s an actor and it’s about to come together.

"The first question [American college kids] asked me was,
'What state is Kuwait in?' They thought Kuwait was in America."

Pitchfork: You grew up absorbing all sorts of different cultures as a kid in Kuwait. How do you compare that to today’s situation in the West, where kids have everything at their fingertips because of the internet?


FAQ: I still think you people need to be curious [in order to absorb the culture]. You need to search Uzbekistani pop music. There are comedic things that go viral all the time, but you have to have a vested interest in exploring the world online. I’m sure that a lot of my friends—even though they’re curious about the music of nations that are not on their radar—still don’t know what Kuwaiti music sounds like.

Pitchfork: What brought you from Kuwait to the United States for college?


FAQ: I got a scholarship from the Ministry of Education in Kuwait, and I ended up going to several colleges: Penn State for one semester before going to George Washington University in Washington, D.C., then I transferred to the University of Miami, and then NYU. I went to University of Miami for all the wrong reasons, but I feel like I got my first real taste of Caribbean and Cuban culture while I was there. I have quite a sizeable Cuban vinyl collection from Miami thrift stores.



Pitchfork: What was your first impression of American college kids?


FAQ: I mean, the first question they asked me was, “What state is Kuwait in?” They thought Kuwait was in America. This was 1999, so it wasn’t that long after the first Gulf War. But at the same time, I understand that a lot of them were only kids when that war happened, so they didn’t know better.

One thing I found very amusing: When I was at NYU I had an etymology class, and there was a geography test. You had to pair the language with country, and I was one of five out of 100 people who passed the test, which just proved to me how little Americans are taught geography. There was a mutiny. The class protested to the professor so much that he dropped that grade. I was like, “Wow, you should come to realize that you don’t know where anything is.” I feel like there is an emphasis against teaching geography in American schools. Americans don’t say, “I’m going to Germany.” They say, “I’m going to Europe.”

"There are very few pop people I’m interested in working with.

"

Pitchfork: Do you get approached by mainstream pop stars or big labels to do writing and composition?


FAQ: That hasn’t happened. I’ve had people ask me to go on tour with them or do a gig for them. I’ve been approached by very well-respected people to do all sorts of things for them, but I’m not very good with that. But I feel like [side project] Future Brown is more likely to go in that direction because our work is basically for vocalists. We’re not really interested in making instrumentals—we would like to work with major rappers and major R&B vocalists. We’re about to sign a record deal with a bigger label, which is very exciting. But for me, that's not at the forefront of my mind. I feel like I’m still a cult person. There are very few pop people I’m interested in working with.



Pitchfork: What are you working on at MoMA PS1 now?

FAQ: I’m one of nine artists from the Gulf region in an art collective called GCC. We’re installing our first show in America. GCC is based on a Gulf Arab government body called the Gulf Cooperation Council, which is like the European Union; calling an art collective the GCC is like calling it the EU or NAFTA. We’re exploring the invisible aspects of Gulf society that are not present online in a way that’s accessible to outsiders. It’s about documenting invisible rituals as well as exploring the hollowness of diplomatic exercises. A lot of our inspiration comes directly from the official GCC website—their lingo, their press shots.

Pitchfork: When you say you’re exploring invisible aspects of Gulf society, are you drawing on things you experienced growing up in Kuwait?

FAQ: Yes. There is a congratulatory culture in the Gulf. From birth onwards, there is a culture of giving people trophies as markers of achievement for making it through society. It’s cementing allegiance to authority at a very young age. Every single family in the Gulf has trophies to the ceiling for so-called achievements. But this art is also about awards, the nature of awards—the way that awards are about institutions validating their own taste rather than honoring genuine, important achievements to mankind.

Pitchfork: Did you watch the Oscars?

FAQ: Not this year. But the most disturbing thing happened at last year’s Oscars when Michelle Obama gave the Best Picture Award to Ben Affleck [for Argo]. It was the most orchestrated political exercise for a film about American hostages in Iran that wasn’t even filmed in Iran. Ben Affleck has never been to Iran. There was a whole mess of problems with that situation.