Profile
Lida Abdul is a visual artist based in the United States. She is known for her compelling images and poetic language of her visual production. She expresses contemporary Afghani culture through a feminine aesthetic of rebuilding and reconstruction in the aftermath of war and destruction. Fleeing Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979, Abdul's journey took her and her family to India and Germany before eventually settling in the United States. Her art is recognized for its exploration of themes such as cultural identity, migration, displacement, and the physical and psychological impacts of war, often employing abstract and dream-like film techniques to evoke thought and emotion.Her works create spaces for the interrogation of inherited and acquired identities, look at the ravages of disaster and war, the transformation and resilience of the individual and society, and give voice to silenced histories and acts of endurance. Using the reality of modern conflict, she creates unusual images in works such as ‘My City has No Monuments’, the ‘Nomadic House’ series and ‘Painting the Ruins of Kabul’. Lida's art was exhibited across the globe, from the National Museum of Afghanistan to the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundations in Lisbon and Paris. Her awards include the Taiwan Award at the Venice Biennale (2005), and the UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts (2007), among others.
