Al Saadi’s storytelling performance is pitched near faultlessly at the cloud generation. The exhibition’s user experience rivals that of the Apple Store. A rusty but airy steel and glass interior funnels the captive viewers towards the pavilion’s Genius Bar where the artist’s highest-prized wares are on display in ornate tins, boxes, and crates. Each contains a tale, a poem, or a little drawing. Line-perfect assistants interpret these tirelessly, though one is left to imagine that even their ad-libs have been tightly scripted.
Al Saadi thus smuggles rustic tales of the Middle East into the YouTube unboxing video and draws pencil-thin lines between the date grove and the universal experience of TikTok. That this strategy is commercial rather than artistic is revealed only by the project’s performative slips and frictions and the frankly excessive resources used to communicate so little.
