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Adel Abidin was born in Baghdad 1973 and he lives and works in Helsinki since 2000. Adel graduated from Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki 2005, before that he studied three years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad.
Adel has produced many strong art works since his arrival in Finland. Today his art is well known in contemporary art scene all over the world.
Year 2008 he has solo exhibitions as well at Baltic Center for Contemporary Art in UK, White Box Gallery in New York, at Projektraum Viktor Bucher Gallery in Vienna, at SPACE/ Contemporary Art Gallery in Bratislava and at MUU Gallery in Helsinki.
Last years Adel has participated to several exhibitions and festivals e.g. Gothenburg Biennial and Venice Biennial, Impakt Festival, The Rencontres Internationales Festival, Freize Art Fair
Adel Abidin succeeds in combining both an ironic tone and a passionate approach in his work. His themes are heavy: fundamentalism, identity, nationalism, nationality, the masses, religion, totalitarianism. In his work, Adel brings an ironic attitude to bear on everyday prejudices and stereotypes, deconstructing the increasingly predominant ethos of either/or in an age when management, morality and law stand for politics, friends and foes for political opposition, technology for science, sex for love, culture for art. In the midst of all this, Adel's works try to shift the focus back on ourselves. First and foremost, we must face us - ourselves - in order to take responsibility for others.
From Marita Muukkonen’s text. See the whole text at
http://www.frame-fund.fi/aom/abidin/introduction.shtml
Following works are showed at 300m3 Art Space:
FOAM
2007-2008
Video installation
How to represent a fundamentalist?
I explore this question by having four young boys shaving the foam off of black balloons. In Iraq, boys hoping to become barbers practice on balloons to learn the trade. I was anxiously waiting to see what would happen to the balloons as they were being shaved, or “interfered with”. Like in real life, most of the balloons reacted by blowing themselves up.
TASTY
2007
Video installation, including two videos and cardboard
In this work, as in most works in this exhibition, I am investigating symbols and how they affect our daily lives. The question at the base of this piece is about the relationship between the inside and outside. I built a mosque made of sugar-cubes and placed it next to an anthill. The ants naturally became attracted by the mosque, and began wandering around it, climbing on its walls, breaking in. The question arises whether they were attracted to the mosque out of ritualistic impulses or out of a baser imperative to build or demolish.
JIHAD
2006
Video piece
The scene is a familiar one, seen far too often in news coverage of the war in Iraq: the videotaped message of the Islamist “terrorist”, with a covered face and a Kalashnikov in his/her hands, reciting from the Koran a message of hate and death. In my version of the videotaped message, the “terrorist” is standing in front of the Stars and Stripes painted on the wall behind him. He starts by reciting a verse from the Koran, and then picks up an acoustic guitar and sings, “This land is my land”
Une Souris Verte/ Green mouse
2008
Video piece- shot film
“There is a very well know children’s song in France called ‘Green Mouse’. The song is about a child who finds a small mouse and takes it to an adult and this adult puts it in a boiling water so the mouse changes to a snail”
I made this short film by adapting the terroristic concept of the song into our daily life and the new fashion of threat that we are all are facing.
www.adelabidin.com |
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