Work in Progress: Bani Abidi

Living between Berlin and Karachi, Bani Abidi works with photography, film, drawing and knitting to create multi-layered installations. Ahead of ‘Fragments from a nightmare’, Abidi's solo exhibition with Experimenter at Frieze London 2024, she reflects on the vulnerability of memory and the power of the small gestures of resistance she has witnessed around the table at her ‘solidarity dinners’.

Livia Russell Can you talk about your new work for Frieze London? 

Bani Abidi ‘Fragments from a Nightmare’ is my new body of drawings and photographs. These documents act as a vessel for thinking through this genocidal moment. Demands for truth, for a people’s right to life and dignity, a cessation of daily bloody massacres and freedom of speech have all been reduced to something akin to a whisper; to the size of a tiny sticker clandestinely stuck to the walls of some pristine neighbourhood in the dead of night, until it’s violently ripped off and stamped on. I’ve been thinking about the vulnerability and fear of truth-tellers, artists and thinkers.

LR How does this work fit within your œuvre?

BA It’s hard to translate power and its absurdity when it takes on such a sinister presence in one’s life. But the extent of the farce and lies has been so extreme, so utterly laughable, that I was able to find humour somewhere. ‘Seeking comfort in a German chair’ is a set of photographic self-portraits based on Bruno Munari’s famous poster Seeking comfort in an uncomfortable chair that he designed for Domus magazine in 1944. For my photographs, I collected four different chairs imagined by German designers – all of whom had associations with the Nazis – and tried to find different positions to sit in them. This is reminiscent of my earliest video, from when I was a student in Chicago in 2000, in which I’m sitting in front of the camera trying to eat a mango. Both are political gestures couched in a seemingly banal performance.

LR Are there new sources of inspiration in your current work?

BA We should all be awarded honorary doctorates for the amount of history, theory and poetry we’ve read over the past ten months to try and grapple with what has passed and is passing. It’s all flowing through me at this point: from the work of Palestinian poets and writers like Adania Shibli (a Berlin friend), to the fearless global resistance of young queer activists, to books by Hannah Arendt, like Lying and Politics, I’m awash with a deep and painful awareness.

In slightly more dispassionate terms, I’m increasingly interested in early 20th-century architecture and design and its relationship with eugenics. What happens when we realize that everything our bodies engage with, and everything we consider to be the epitome of beauty, was designed for the idealized Vitruvian Man? Industrialized standardization was happening at the same moment that certain races and behaviours were being privileged over others.

I’ve been thinking about the vulnerability and fear of truth-tellers, artists and thinkers.

LR What does your day in the studio look like right now?

BA If I’m lucky, it begins with some kind of stretching or yoga. I feel extra stiff and tense these days. I’ve been listening incessantly to a playlist called ‘Bani sad joyful friends’, which my friend made for me when I had my first solidarity dinner back in October 2023. It’s on Spotify, so anyone can find it. The playlist is so damn good, it’s been impossible to close my Spotify account.

Then, I draw or watch videos of all the people who have trembled or broken down while speaking in public and in political forums about Gaza. Jonathan Glazer’s hands, for instance, trembled so visibly while he read out his acceptance speech for Zone of Interest (2023) at the Oscars Awards Ceremony. I think so many of us wept seeing his fear, and witnessing his courage. As time has passed, other voices have broken. People have tried to maintain composure, some have just had to pause and others have openly wept with tears streaming down their faces. I’ve been drawing from these videos.

I’m more interested than ever in being an agent for younger, cancelled and uninvited voices.

LR How do you see your practice developing?

BA This is a moment of rupture, so things have to be rethought. In an immediate way, I’m more interested than ever in selling work and being an agent for collaborations and productions of younger, cancelled and uninvited voices. The social welfare state has failed us in this regard and clamped down on free speech. Is redistributed private capital the only way to talk openly? Black Lives Matter was funded by private Black wealth. Clearly truth and memory need financial support.

LR If my studio could speak it would say...

BA Come and listen to James Baldwin with me.

Further Information

Frieze London and Frieze Masters, 9 – 13 October 2024, The Regent’s Park.

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^{Main Image: Bani Abidi's drawings from videos. Photo: Bani Abidi}