Bani Abidi: Section Yellow at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art

Bani Abidi: Two of Two, 2010 Inkjet Prints © The artist and Green Cardamom, London.

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead presents the first UK solo public exhibition of Pakistani artist Bani Abidi. Predominately working with photography and video, Abidi’s work highlights the changing parameters of nationhood and citizenship. The artist draws our attention to the relational, often sensitive space, between the citizen, the state and the individual. The body of work Section Yellow comprises a film and a series of interrelated photographs.

Bani Abidi: Stills from ‘The Distance from here’ 2010 Video, 12:00 mins Courtesy of the artist and Green Cardamom, London.

The Distance from Here 2010, a central work in the exhibition, is a video that pans between two distinct environments; the sanitised interior of a generic waiting room and a vast outdoor ground circumscribed by security scanners, guards and surface markings. In both locations a crowd of people quietly assembles and waits their turn, although for what one doesn’t entirely know. Abidi develops a play on coercion and control, using migration and the movement of people as a subtle metaphor. Ambient sounds form the mood of the work: the deadly stasis and mechanical noise of the waiting area tannoy contrast with the sound of dawn in the world outside.

Abidi’s recent photographic work, Untitled, One of Two and Two of Two, all 2010 compliment the film. With the series Untitled, mundane plastic and paper folders, stuffed thick with stamped copies of personal documents form a horizon. Text and image combine to create narratives of endurance, of longing and resignation. These works contrast with the enlarged passport photograph One of Two, that makes for a more intimate encounter, showing the haunted expression of an old man.

Abidi’s ongoing series of digital drawings look at various types of surveillance architecture in Pakistan. Class disparity and the protectionist nature of gated homes are examined in Intercommunication Devices 2009, while Security Barriers A-L, 2008 shows security barriers found outside foreign embassies and government buildings in Karachi. Isolated from their context of use, both of these series embody hierarchies of power and partial, or selective, communication.

Bani Abidi: Two of Two, 2010 Inkjet Prints © The artist and Green Cardamom, London.

The collective expression of patience and silent resilience is a powerful metaphor throughout Abidi’s work. She generates an atmosphere that evokes the personal, domestic and the familiar, set against the larger tectonic forces associated with nationhood and citizenship within Pakistan today.

Bani Abidi: Exercise in Redirecting Lines, 2010 Collage of inkjet prints Courtesy of the artist and Green Cardamom, London.

BIOGRAPHY

Bani Abidi was born in 1971, Karachi, Pakistan and divides her practice between New Delhi and Karachi. She graduated from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan in 1994 and completed her Master’s from the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1999.

Her works have been exhibited widely in solo and group shows internationally. Her recent exhibitions include: Blockbuster: Cinema for Exhibitions, Mexico, 2011, the 4th Fotofestival in Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Germany, 2011 and The Global Contemporary: Art Worlds After 1989, 2011, ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe, Germany. Solo shows include: Karachi, Green Cardamom, London 2010 and Grey Noise, Lahore , Pakistan. Her work was also in Where Three Dreams Cross, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; The X Lyon Biennale 2009, Lyon, France; 7th Gwangju Biennale 2008, Kwangju, South Korea, among others.

Her works are in the collections of British Museum, London, Fondazione Patricia Re Rebaudengo, Turin, MoMA, New York, Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi, and other private collections. She is currently an artist in residence at the prestigious DAAD Berliner Kunstler Program.

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art

Gateshead Quays

South Shore Road

Gateshead

NE8 3BA

Tel: 0191 478 1810

Exhibtion Ends: 12 February 2012