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Waiting game
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Pakistani artist Bani Abidi’s works present moments of anticipation, anxiety and emptiness
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Hanging around Children wait endlessly in Reserved
At first sight, Bani Abidi’s two-channel video, “Reserved”, looks like a simple visual documentary. Covering a couple of street scenes in addition to happenings in and around an auditorium, the take is essentially on people and the act of waiting.
Children waving flags quite mechanically and disinterestedly, stand in a line in the hot sun waiting for an unidentified VIP. There is a traffic jam elsewhere and people are impatiently waiting for the VIP and convoy to pass.
The scene shifts to the entrance of an auditorium where it is the turn of suited, booted organisers to become part of the waiting game on the red carpet. Inside the auditorium, there are rows and rows of vacant but ‘reserved’ seats. It is quite stuffy in there and some people come in, take seats, fan themselves and … wait. The overall feeling inside and outside is one of anxiety, anticipation and unbridled uneasiness.
Abidi’s nine-minute video was commissioned by the Singapore National Arts Council for the Singapore Biennale in 2006. Sonia Campagnola writing for Flash Art feels that the shots of pupils and city’s blocked traffic “indicate the paralysis of a system awaiting a leader, a lucid allusion to all forms of dictatorship and submission”.
By itself, the theme of waiting is not new. Artists, poets and writers have dealt with the notion of waiting even before Samuel Beckett wrote “En attendant Godot” (“Waiting for Godot”) almost sixty years ago.
Unlike Beckett who often created unrecognisable characters, Abidi’s protagonists are quite familiar to the viewer. The 37-year old artist who was born in Karachi, Pakistan and trained at the Art Institute of Chicago employs uncomplicated shots and effective camera movements in her work.
While there are moments of irritation and intrigue, Abidi laces her work with a slice of humour too. Stuck in the traffic jam, a car driver puts a cigarette on his lips which will be lit by an unseen person sitting in a neighbouring car. In another instance, the group of children suddenly breaks the line, lured by the sight of an ice-cream vendor. Not very innovative, but still good enough in the given context.
Without being exceptional in form or content, Abidi’s video is nevertheless engaging. Although the entire event is staged for the camera, the scenes and characters look authentic.
More interesting than the video itself is Abidi’s series of twelve inject prints, Security Barriers A – L. These drawings illustrate how man-made barriers have become an increasingly common feature of the landscape of our cities. The barriers have their own particular functions and perpetuate the notion that ‘safety’ is found behind closed doors and electrified fences. Abidi renders them intricately and minimally before presenting them as forceful and often, political symbols that mark the city of Karachi or for that manner, any city of the world. Bani Abidi’s debut solo exhibition in India also includes a well-composed photograph, The Address, which also marks the theme of waiting and emptiness.
The show concludes on May 28 at Galleryske, St. Mark’s Road. Phone: 4112 0873.
GIRIDHAR KHASNIS
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