Lida Abdul

The work of Lida Abdul creates spaces for the interrogation of inherited and acquired identities, criticizes the ravages of disaster and war, analyses the transformation and resilience of the individual and society, and gives voice to silenced histories and acts of endurance. Lida Abdul received a Prince Claus award in 2006 for the compelling images and poetic language of her visual production.

This Prince Claus Fund Library Publication is the first monograph on the work of Lida Abdul who was born in Kabul in 1973. After having lived in exile for many years she visited Afghanistan again, where she encountered total devastation in her native country. Lida Abdul uses diverse media including video, film, photography, installation and live performance in which she transfers the experience of war, invasion, destruction and fanaticism into the symbolic language of art.

Els van der Plas, Director of the Prince Claus Fund wrote the introduction to the publication Lida Abdul. In the following part, that was taken from this introduction, she speaks of the work by Lida Abdul she saw at the Venice Biennale in June 2005;

 'I was pleased that the Afghan pavilion had been organised with great élan. I was even more delighted to be able to see Lida Abdul’s extraordinary video presentations. The first work I saw, White House, impressed me greatly. It consists of an arid landscape in which we see the ruins of a village that has been either bombed or demolished. It is a desolate sight. We follow a woman with a pot of paint and a brush (the artist herself), who whitewashes everything that is still standing. This is the artist’s ‘J’accuse’ , the creation of a guilty landscape where the pearly white ruins shriek their indictment so eloquently: Stop the senseless destruction and obliteration of people and their culture! Stop destroying a country with a celebrated cultural history that spans many thousands of years!

Another video, Clapping Stones, criticises the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddhas. We see a group of young men in front of the gaping holes in the rocks. They are performing a ritual, using stones from the Buddhas. The viewer is confronted with the voids in the rocks and the tapping of the pebbles, which are all that is left of the Buddhas. This is the same indictment as the white ruins, the same ‘J’accuse’ or guilty landscape of White House.

Abdul’s work refers to the universal visual power of ruins and historical landscapes – such as that of the skeleton of the dome of the former Chamber of Commerce, which had withstood the force of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima or the image of the mosque in Banda Aceh, which alone remained standing in the totally ruined landscape following the tsunami in 2004.

These ruins became mythical beacons of hope and respect for human life and cultural production. In Abdul’s work Dome from 2005, a boy spins around inside a dome that has been shot to pieces. This work seems to refer to the abovementioned mythical symbols, which provide the landscape and its inhabitants with an enduring reminder of the dramatic historical events. In Dome, the artist draws attention to the destruction of a building, of a country and a people that fell victim to the Taliban and the Russian and American invasions. The boy represents youth - the future tasked with the responsibility to rebuild the land and provide it with an identity again. He looks into the air as though he expects the bombers to return at any moment. Or does he see hope glimmering on the horizon?

Read the whole text of the introduction 'a beauty that hurts' by Els van der Plas

Inspiration from Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, HarperCollins Publishers London, 1995

 

 

Cover of the publication and portrait Lida Abdul

Booklaunch

31st of January 2008 the publication will be launched and Lida Abdul will be interviewed by the Cultural Editor of NRC Raymond van de Boogaard in The Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam where the exhibition 'Hidden Afghanistan' can be seen till April 2008. read more

Read the report of the 2006 Prince Claus Awards Committee on Lida Abdul

Details

Edited by Renata Caragliano, Stella Cervasio,Nikos Papastergiadis,
Virginia Pérez-Ratton, Els van der Plas

Published in conjunction with Lida Abdul’s exhibition
at Museo Archeologico Nazionale,Naples
(January – March 2008)
Bilingual edition (English/Italian)

162 pages, 100 illustrations
In cooperation with hopefulmonster publishers,Torino
www.hopefulmonster.net

ISBN 978-88-7757-223-3