After I'd been in Kabul a few days, I went through a sea change. I forgot my original intentions of going there and soon I was trying to just hold on a sense of reality that would allow me to go day to day without having a breakdown. The scenes of suffering were almost biblical and I suppose it was naive of me not to expect them. I knew that the works I made in Kabul would have to be poetic pieces that were as much about my relationship with the place as they were about some attempt to insinuate a direction out of the quagmire we Afghans found ourselves in. I knew there had to be healing and that in my own small way I could to open up a space for that. The pieces I made there are both personal and political at the same time because I made them literally out in the open and involved people I met in the streets.
While I was living abroad, Afghanistan was a jumble of what I remembered, what I was told, what I'd read in the media and of course what I imagined it to be. I knew that the country was destroyed by more than 20 years of war and that the psyches of the people were probably so damaged that my going there to do art seemed rather inconsiderate. Did they really need art classes? Would I be exploiting their suffering if I made pieces incorporating documentary techniques?
Making work in Kabul and its environs is very difficult and oftentimes heartbreaking because you see the suffering of people everywhere and initially you have to work to position yourself emotionally and physically in a space, which possesses very different assumptions about everyday life. I felt like a director trying to create what some have called ‘temporary autonomous zones,’ in a world where there was little certainty at a daily level.
In the "White House" videos/performance, I am painting ruins in Kabul. They were very close to the military base and knowing this made the making of this piece a rather uncanny experience. At some level, I wanted to make a sculpture that was as much an answer to those who see destruction as a solution to more difficult problems. At the same time, I wanted to preserve these ruins for the future. Just as ruins. Not monuments.
I made the second piece in Bamiyan, where the grand Buddha statue was destroyed by the Taliban a few years ago. The video is 4 minutes long loop that shows the Bamiyan valley and then a close-up of 20 men dressed all in black standing in front of the Buddha. The men gently create a clapping sound by hitting together the stones they hold in their hands. For me it was a recognition that something is lost and the process of remembering is all that’s left of it.
Statement of the artist.