Global Porn. 2002
Lida Abdul

·      She grew up in Kabul and was forced to leave five years after the Soviet invasion of 1979. At first Abdul and her family believed it would be only a short time. Living first in New Delhi, then Germany, the US and finally back to Afghanistan where she has been living off and on. While her parents were not political, her uncle was a poet.  After the Russians had taken over, Afghan Communist searched for members of the opposition and her parents forcibly burned all of her uncles books. “Sometimes the scene plays in the back of my mind and I guess my fascination with books and with ruins has to do with this seminal image in my family history.”[1]

o   Abdul claims that as a child of refugees and as an Afghan woman, she lacked encouragement which produced conflict felt when producing art. She believes this shows in her work, and most prominently in her earliest performance pieces. 

·      While living in the US, she earned a BA in political science in 1997, BA in philosophy and an MFA in 2000[2]

·      Abdul’s film compositions discuss the interaction of bodies and landscapes to investigate “notions of identity, homeland, exile and political resistance.”[3]

·      I called this exhibition Ruins Reimagined

o   “ 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.” [4]

·      In abduls work, Ruins serve as a metaphor for “human lives”[5]

o   This is why I have included a few works that do not contain actual ruins, because they relate to the ruins in the context of the ruins being metaphorical. In a similar way, Abdul serves as a symbol for the women in Afghan society and the issues they face daily. 

o   She personally deals with issues of gender, the resistance she feels making work and going through the bureaucracy to get permission to shoot. 

·      I make art about things that affect me, because I believe that events are a form of speech, a question of sorts that demands a response. If we don’t create a dialogue, then one day we stop hearing everything except the little narcissist inside us.”[6]

o   Abdul claims that as a child of refugees and as an Afghan woman, she lacked encouragement which produced conflict felt when producing art. She believes this shows in her work, and most prominently in her earliest performance pieces. [7]

[1] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 157
[2] The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation, https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/lida-abdul.
[3] The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation, https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/lida-abdul.
[4] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 13
[5] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 17
[6] http://acaw.info/ACAW/pastprograms/2008program/acaw2008/interviewText/AAP57_LidaAbdul.pdf
[7] Performance, Mundo. “Lo Que Elegimos Pasar Por Alto. Entrevista a Lida Abdul.” MUNDO PERFORMANCE, 17 Aug. 2021, https://mundoperformance.net/2021/08/17/lo-que-elegimos-pasar-por-alto-entrevista-a-lida-abdul/. 159

·      There is the desire to speak in them, as if everything had to be spoken at the same time, the sounds of all the words simultaneously expressed but remaining intelligible, even to myself. There is a certain automatism about them as I am sure there must be to all true witnessing. Maybe I am wrong, but I am convinced that the body has its own memory banks that the mind does not always use. This for me is the paradox, the pornography of a necessary act that would require of some women to reveal everything, everything in order to really know if they have suffered.[1]

·      Another layer to the work is the element of “authentic local culture” diminishing and being substituted with forms of mass-production that are mass-marketed. A conversation of our resistless consumption and “acceptance of the forces of cultural homogenization” Abdul comments that “the boundaries between things are slowly being eroded to make everything go down smoothly”[2]

·      “Apart from the apparent innocence and normality of the gesture, evokes the desire and will for rebellion against the submission of women that can only be expressed with “honeyed words”.[3]

·      In this work, Abdul is commenting on the problem of the veil in her culture and through curating a compulsive loop honey pouring out of the mouth of a veiled women, she is commenting on the confines of women and reimagining a future where women can speak their truths and resist ‘cultural homogenization’ in favor of the rich and authentic historical truths provided by their heritage.  

·      It can also be interpreted as “ a critical refusal of a religious, male, and patriarchial culture” [4]

[1] Catching, Rebecca. “Landscap Es of Reme Mbrance.” Http://Acaw.info/ACAW/Pastprograms/2008program/acaw2008/InterviewText/AAP57_LidaAbdul.Pdf.
[2] Catching, Rebecca. “Landscap Es of Reme Mbrance.” Http://Acaw.info/ACAW/Pastprograms/2008program/acaw2008/InterviewText/AAP57_LidaAbdul.Pdf.
[3] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 23
[4] Bassanelli, Michela, and Gennaro Posttiglione. Re-Enacting The Past. Museography for Conflict Heritage. http://www.matriarchiviomediterraneo.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ruins.pdf.

o   This piece continues the conversation of women and their relationship with war in afghan society. 

o   When the subject for performance art, it becomes a challenging encounter for the artist, due to the conflict she feels making art and because of her refusal to allow her works to become “vehicles for mourning”  [1]

However, she overcomes these challenges as what’s important to her “is that the resistance does not stop, the fact she is continually making work there, she feels that a kind of change is taking place” [2]

[1] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 159
[2] Museum, Brooklyn. Global Feminisms: Lida Abdul, 28 Apr. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4iOuoOPlN0.

·      The building in this video sits in ruins after a recent (at the time of the video) bombing, was used as part of the government agency and is a beautiful house with Greek and roman influenced architecture[1]

o   This video was created to represent Afghanistan in the Venice Biennale 

o   Completely transformed the ruins into a sculpture, when the man walks across, even he is painted and then in the end of the video animals take over the space. 

o   The video itself is a metaphor for Afghanistan itself.

·      “the action of whitewashing the ruins of a bombed building near Kabul takes on a purifying value” [2]

·      Title—“presents on the one hand a quest for traces of an identity confused in the wake of successive waves of aggression and destruction and on the other, as a subtle reference to the seat of world power,” 

·      Serves as a “visual metaphor for the healing and trauma that still lingers within the post-devastation spaces within the White House.” This destruction encompasses the Afghan body as well as the physical architecture. [3]

·      “Something that lies beyond truth and falsity, as an access to a third dimension in which the imaginary and the real tend to coincide. The ritual gesture celebrating mourning expresses the desire for reality in oblivion and the care of fragments.” [4]

·      The painting of the back of a male may be interpreted to spread an element of domination[5]

o   This may be interpreted due to the intense resistance and challenges she faces producing art in Afghanistan and as a ruin

·      In painting the ruins, she chose to be intentionally unveiled, because she did not want it to be about that.   

o   Because she refused to allow her performance to be connected to mourning, she felt she had “to protect the form from the intensity of what [she] felt”[6]

[1] Museum, Brooklyn. Global Feminisms: Lida Abdul, 28 Apr. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4iOuoOPlN0.
[2] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 19
[3] Performance, Mundo. “Lo Que Elegimos Pasar Por Alto. Entrevista a Lida Abdul.” MUNDO PERFORMANCE, 17 Aug. 2021, https://mundoperformance.net/2021/08/17/lo-que-elegimos-pasar-por-alto-entrevista-a-lida-abdul/.
[4] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 19
[5] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 29
[6] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 159

·      Children are still present here, highlighting the layers of normal everyday life continuing in the midst of war. She attempts to “reclaim the normality of everyday life rather than conjure some version of the epic resistance or resign herself to the cruel fate of nature’s cycle.” [2]

Returning to sites of bombings and rubble becomes an act of defiance regarding the war. “to pick up a single stone, is a tep toward re-entering the culture that war suspended and attempted to eliminate.” Through her works, she is also claiming that this is where the Afghan people live and want to be.[3]

[1] “Clapping with Stones: Art and Acts of Resistance.” Sothebys.com, https://www.sothebys.com/en/museums/rubin-museum-of-art/exhibitions/clapping-with-stones-art-and-acts-of-resistance.
[2] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 41
[3] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 39

·      Children represent the future, hope, and who will be left with the aftermath of the conflicts of war to deal with the repercussions. Although now they do not fully realize the atrocities that have become regular happenings due to the presence of war, in this moment in time, they still harbor hope due to the disconnect they have to the traumas in comparison to adults. Children are functioning here almost as adults, standing as merchants selling bricks.

[1] Abdul, Lida. Lida Abdul. Hopefulmonster, 2007. 21

·      This work appears to be very hopeful. It shows children playing among an abandoned military plane, stuffing the bullet holes and swinging ropes tied to it, dreaming of flying.

·      She continues exploring the relationship of form, giving this plane an almost sculptural aspect while addressing issues of identity and the issues that face the lives of daily Afghan people. 

·      The plane takes the form of a bird, or a skeleton and Abdul found the beauty in this abandoned structure, and includes a narrative in her work for the first time. She calles this piece, a fantasy piece. [2]

[1]  Performance, Mundo. “Lo Que Elegimos Pasar Por Alto. Entrevista a Lida Abdul.” MUNDO PERFORMANCE, 17 Aug. 2021, https://mundoperformance.net/2021/08/17/lo-que-elegimos-pasar-por-alto-entrevista-a-lida-abdul/.
[2] Museum, Brooklyn. Global Feminisms: Lida Abdul, 28 Apr. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4iOuoOPlN0.

[1] Performance, Mundo. “Lo Que Elegimos Pasar Por Alto. Entrevista a Lida Abdul.” MUNDO PERFORMANCE, 17 Aug. 2021, https://mundoperformance.net/2021/08/17/lo-que-elegimos-pasar-por-alto-entrevista-a-lida-abdul/.
 

·      I end this exhibit with one of her most recent works. It’s produced with a strong sense of defiance and beauty. 

·      Abdul describes this piece as “ a metaphor for a situation that is unbalanced and where there is no solid foundation, like the protagonist of the film looking for a base on which to plant his flag, but ultimately fails.” She also describes the piece as an exploration of “nationalism and pride, and the precarious relationship one has with nationality. The flag is an abstract symbol but for many it is a mark of patriotic identity and for others as symbol of skepticism..”[2]

·      Lida Abdul utilizes ruins as metaphors, poetry of form, and her experience as an Afghan woman to curate discussions of the politics, culture and current state of Afghanistan

[1] Museum, Brooklyn. Global Feminisms: Lida Abdul, 28 Apr. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4iOuoOPlN0.
[2] Performance, Mundo. “Lo Que Elegimos Pasar Por Alto. Entrevista a Lida Abdul.” MUNDO PERFORMANCE, 17 Aug. 2021, https://mundoperformance.net/2021/08/17/lo-que-elegimos-pasar-por-alto-entrevista-a-lida-abdul/.