Face to Face with Nothing

LIDA ABDUL

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For the past few years, Abdul has been working in different parts of Afghanistan on projects exploring the relationship between architecture and identity.

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Lida Abdul in front of her short film In Transit which discusses war and recovery in Afghanistan.

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Brick Sellers of Kabul, 2006

16mm film transfer

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Tree, 2005

16mm film transfer

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What We Saw Upon Awakening, 2006

16mm film transfer

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In Transit, 2006

16mm film transfer

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Born in Kabul, Afghanistan in 1973, Abdul lived in Germany and India as a refugee after she was forced to leave Afghanistan after the former-Soviet invasion. Her work fuses the tropes of ‘Western” formalism with the numerous aesthetic traditions–Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan and nomadic–that collectively influenced Afghan art and culture. She has produced work in many media including video, film, photography, installation and live performance. Her most recent work has been featured at the Venice Biennale 2005, Istanbul Modern, Kunsthalle Vienna, Museum of Modern Art Arnhem, Netherlands and Miami Central, CAC Centre d’Art Contemporain de Bretigny, and Frac Lorraine Metz, France. She has also exhibited in festivals in Mexico, Spain, Germany, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan; She was also a featured artist at the Central Asian Biennial 2004.

DIE ZEIT on Lida Abdul