ADEL ABIDIN

Born 1973 in Baghdad, Iraq. Lives and works in Helsinki, Finland.

Adel Abidin was born in Baghdad, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts before moving to Helsinki, Finland in 2000. Having started his career as a painter, he began to work with video and completed an MF A in New Media at Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. Adding sculpture and installation to his repertoire, Abidin uses humour and irony to look at themes of cultural identity, marginalisation, nationalism, war, terror and heroism, surveying different experiences of living in a conflicted and precarious world. In a work exhibited in the Nordic Pavilion of the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), Abidin looks at life in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 US invasion. Titled Abidin Travels (2006), the installation uses cutting humour in imagining a travel agency that touts the many lures of Baghdad as a ‘must visit’ holiday destination. Painfully applying the gloss of tourism to scenes of burning cars, looting, the suffering and the dead, he sarcastically examines the impossibility of communicating the realities of war and, through means of an upbeat, American-accented voiceover, is unequivocal in his criticism of the American occupation.

Many of his works reflect the experience of being Arab, Muslim and Iraqi within western society, and of being faced with questions about his identity. In Cold Interrogation (2006), queries such as ‘How did you end up in Finland?’ and ‘How does it feel to ride a camel?’ emanate from a domestic refrigerator, while through a peephole in the door a video is seen of the Finnish man responsible for asking these somewhat insulting, but well-meaning, questions. I am Sorry (2008) is a sound installation inspired by a visit to the United States, during which, when asked where he came from and he answered ‘Iraq’, people invariably replied, ‘I’m sorry.’ A series of illuminated signs ringed with coloured light bulbs also amplify this ambiguous evasion of responsibility.

Une Souris Verte/Green Mouse (2008), shown here, takes its point of departure from a French children’s song of the same title. The lyrics tell the story of a child who brings a small mouse to show an adult, who in turn plunges it into boiling water, following which the mouse turns into a snail. The theme of violent transformation inherent in this song is translated by Abidin into a video staged in the quiet corridors of a hotel. Along these passageways, a cleaner (played by the artist) goes about his business, pushing his trolley, occupied with the task of cleaning up the mess as a series of bizarre explosions plague the establishment. A small child also wanders these corridors singing the title song. The cause of the blasts is unknown, and the bland acceptance by the cleaner of his chore presents a microcosm of a world anaesthetised by universal, unopposed acts of violence and terrorism.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2010 ‘Adel Abidin’, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, February, Helsinki, Finland
2009 ‘I am not interested’, Gallery Titanik, Turku, Finland
2009 ‘Jihad’, Finnish Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
2008 ‘ASSUME’, Musèe d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Paris, France
2008 ‘Three Works’, Gallery 300m3, Gothenburg, Sweden

Selected Group Exhibitions

2009 ‘Almos(t) There’, Regis Center for Art, Minneapolis, USA
2009 ‘Normal Invitation’, Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark
2009 ‘Coping with contingency: Seven Methods’, Art Moscow, Russia
2009 ‘Summertime’, Moen44, Moen, Denmark
2009 ‘Thinking About Death’, MAP, Mobile Art Production, Stockholm, Sweden

Selected Bibliography

Fabrice Bousteau, ‘Pourquoi l’art contemporain arabe séduit le monde’, Beaux Arts magazine, no. 282, 2007, pp.122–29
Charlotte Higgins, ‘Fake loos, Baghdad holidays and birdmen’, Guardian, 9 June 2007
Laura U. Marks, ‘This Land Is Your Land: The Art of Adel Abidin’, exhibition catalogue for the Nordic Pavilion, 52^nd Venice Biennale, Framework, Helsinki, 2007, pp. 80–87
Nizan Shaked, ‘The 11^th International Cairo Biennale’, X-TRA, vol. 11, no. 4, summer 2009
Carol Vogel, ‘Art in the Present Tense: Politics, Loss and Beauty’, New York Times, 11 June 2007