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Adel Abidin
Adel Abidin, Memorial, vidéo (2009). Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Anne de Villepoix, Paris. Photo : Nicolas Brasseur, Le Printemps de Septembre 2012.
Adel Abidin, Memorial, video (2009). Courtesy of the artist and Gallery Anne de Villepoix, Paris. Photo : Nicolas Brasseur, Le Printemps de Septembre 2012.
Born in 1973 in Baghdad, he lives and works in Helsinki.
Starting from an intimate experience at the crossroads of the Arab and Western worlds, Adel Abidin's work is permeated by the notion of discrepancy, linked to his status as an Iraqi exiled in Finland. Isolation, religion and identity are all themes that he frequently addresses. The artist questions and distorts the cultural codes that govern us. Adel Abidin, who uses sarcasm as a corrosive weapon, sums up his "way" as follows: "Humour and irony are at the centre of my language".
The video presented at Les Abattoirs - Musée Frac Occitanie Toulouse is inspired by an event the artist witnessed at the age of seventeen during a bombing in Baghdad. In 1991, Adel Abidin went to see his favourite bridge, which the Americans had just destroyed. On one of the debris of the bridge, he saw a dead cow. The cow occupied his thoughts for a long time. Was it on the bridge at the time of the bombing? Or under it? What was it doing there, alone, in the middle of the city?
Nearly twenty years later, at a time in his life when solitude and the idea that Man needs to not feel alone are tormenting him, the artist remembered this cow, a sociable animal if ever there was one. And he suddenly formed a vision of its tragic end, that fatal fall as the animal tries to jump from one broken piece of the bridge to another. As Adel Abidin says, without any sarcasm for once, "this installation is his memorial".
Adel Abidin studied at the Baghdad School of Fine Arts where he trained as a painter. In 2001, he moved to Finland where he obtained a degree (MFA "New Media") at the Helsinki School of Art. Since then, the artist and video maker has gained international recognition. He represented Finland at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007, and Iraq in 2011, at the 54th edition of the event. Adel Abidin has carried out a large number of projects: at the MAC/VAL, Vitry-sur-Seine and at the White Box Gallery in New York (2008), at the Finnish Institute in Stockholm (2009), at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2010), at the Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman (Jordan, 2011).