Adel Abidin
On "Abidin Travels - Welcome to Baghdad", part of the Nordic pavilion at the Venice Biennial 2007.
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Also in 2006, Abidin made a video installation called "Construction Site," in which we see in close-up a little girl’s hands moving pebbles with plastic spoons, while we hear her sing a melancholy love song. To see the video, you have crouch down in a small pile of rubble, so it feels you are there with her. Abidin notes that he filmed this little scene "in a street in Baghdad after a recent explosion." This work is powerful because it is both immersed in life and making a political point, both painterly and graphic. In itself the installation brings us into the specificity of the child’s universe, the intensity of her stone-moving game, her pretty pink plastic sandals. In its context it is graphic, making us ask, What happens to children whose point of reference is the seemingly random violence of present-day Baghdad? When destruction is happening all around, can a child save her mind through small acts of construction?
© Photos: Adel Abidin
On "Abidin Travels - Welcome to Baghdad", part of the Nordic pavilion at the Venice Biennial 2007.