LIDA ABDUL Afghanistan
Auckland Art Gallery - NEW Gallery

As an Afghan artist, who left her country of birth a few years after the former Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I have tried to comprehend the disaster that has ravaged my country for more than two decades. Blanchot says, A disaster touches nothing, but changes everything. Afghanistan is physically destroyed, yes, but the resilience to survive persists unabated. Language, notions of domesticity and perceptions of the other are all transformed radically, to the extent that survivors / refugees often refuse to talk about what they went through. We have all known the history of this silence. These nomadic artists give voice to the silence amongst us through their works.

There is always the fear that the work of dissident artist, or one too close to an unfolding 'politics' compromises its aesthetic intentions; the fear that form might become subordinate to content. As well-intentioned as this critique might appear to be, one has to ask: Whose politics? In my work, I try to juxtapose the space of politics with the space of reverie, almost absurdity, the space of shelter with that of the desert; in all of this I try to perform the 'blank spaces' that are formed when everything is taken away from people. How do we come face to face with 'nothing' with 'emptiness' where there was something earlier. I was a refugee myself for a few years, moving from one country to another, knowing full well that at every juncture I was a guest, who at any moment might to asked to leave. The refugee's world is a portable one, allowing for easy movement between borders. It is one that can be taken away as easily as it was given: provisionally and with a little anxiety on the part of the host.

Sometimes people say, I am post-identity, post-nation, etc. I don't know what this means. For me the most difficult thing is precisely to go past the memory of an event; my works are the forms of my failed attempts to, what others call, transcend. But what? For me art is always a petition for another world, a momentary shattering of what is comfortable so that we become more sophisticated in reclaiming the present. The new wandering souls of the globe, the new global refuseniks - stubborn, weak, persecuted, strong - will continue to make art as long as people believe in easy solution and closures of the most banal kinds.

- Lida Abdul, excerpted from www.lidaabdul.com/statement.htm

Background

Lida Abdul was born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1973. Following the Soviet invasion of the country, she lived in Germany and India as a refugee, before going to the United States where she undertook her studies. Abdul has recently returned to live and work in Kabul. Her work featured in the Afghanistan Pavilion, 51st Venice Biennale, 2005. Other recent solo exhibitions include Ursula Blickle Video Lounge Solo, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 2005; Lida Abdul, Pino Pascali Contemporary Art Museum, Polignano, 2006; Lida Abdul, Giorgio Persano Gallery, Turin, 2006; Petition for Another World, Museum Voor Moderne Kunst, Arnhem, 2006; and the two-person exhibition Now, Here, Over There, Fonds Régional D'Art Contemporain (FRAC) Lorraine, Metz, 2006. Selected group exhibitions include Contemporaneity, Academy of Fine Arts, Tashkent and Museum of Fine Arts, Bishkek, 2004; In the Shadow of Heroes: Central Asian Biennial, Bishkek, 2005; Wall to be Destroyed, FRAC Lorraine, Metz, 2005; The UnQuiet World, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2006; Doubtful Strait, Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San José, 2006; Gwangju Biennial, 2006 and 27th Bienal de São Paulo, 2006. In 2007, Abdul's work will feature in Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum. Her work is discussed in the catalogue that accompanied Now, Here, Over There, FRAC Lorraine, 2006.

www.lidaabdul.com