Art Knowledge News
Green Cardamom to Show New Work by Pakistani Artist Bani Abidi |
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| Written by Sarah Livingworth |
| Tuesday, 22 December 2009 02:48 |
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The second work, Intercommunication Devices (2009) is a set of digital drawings, where Abidi uses the idea of assembling a visual archive to explore exclusionary spaces, or what Itty Abraham refers to as ‘Security aesthetics.’ Intercommunication Devices explores the meeting point or threshold where power and privilege meets the disempowered and excluded. This work follows closely on from her much acclaimed Security Barriers A-L, another example of the artist’s engagement with exclusionary architecture and spatial controls, and was also shown at the Xth Lyon Biennale.  Karachi Series 1 consists of a series of six photographs
on lightboxes, all featuring a central protagonist involved in a seemingly
banal, domestic activity in the middle of a deserted street at sunset. The
light, the postures of the figures and the focused calm of their activities
imbue a gentle and shared melancholy to each scene. The images, and by extension
the protagonists, are clearly part of a common larger narrative. The
accompanying titles list names, times and places bring to the fore the common
circumstances of their creation. The photographs are all taken in Karachi in the
last ten days of August 2008; all at roughly 7.45pm; and the names of the
individuals suggest that they are part of the non-Muslim minorities of Pakistan
– Christian, Parsi and Hindu. Karachi Series 1 is an exploration of the place of
religious minorities in a public environment not known for its acceptance of
difference. During the month of Ramadan, at sunset, (in August at roughly
7.45pm) the time when Muslims break their fast, the streets of Karachi are
deserted. By venturing into the street and performing everyday tasks in public,
Abidi’s non-Muslim subjects reclaim a time and a place where their status as
equal citizens in metropolitan Karachi is not contested.
Intercommunication Devices, records the various types of intercoms found on the front gates on a street in the Defence Housing Authority, a perceptibly wealthy enclave in Karachi. They investigate the notion of ‘intercommunication’ between the private space of an ‘upper-class’ household and the public space of the street. The clean, almost sales catalogue-like treatment of Abidi’s digital drawings, faithful in every detail to the objects they describe, without providing any visual information about the surroundings from which they are extracted, is both intriguing and disarming. Reduced to their pure form, in the style of a scientific illustration or a technical drawing, they invite a closer scrutiny of their function as objects. Abidi’s work is also included in the Where Three Dreams Cross – 150 years of Photography from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh at London’s Whitechapel Gallery. This exhibition runs from January 21 to As part of the events for that exhibition, there will be, at Whitechapel, an artist’s talk in association with Green Cardamom. Visit : http://www.greencardamom.net/ Bani Abidi’s videos, photographic works and drawings use elements of performance and orchestration to explore the processes of political history, popular imagination and identity formation. Abidi was born in Karachi in 1971, and currently lives between New Delhi and Karachi. She received her BFA degree from Lahore’s National College of Arts (NCA) in 1994 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. Her work is in the collections of the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan; Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; the Marguelies Collection, Miami and MoMA, New York. Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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