Lida Abdul – White House , 2005

Abstract

Broadcast Transcript: I’m David Cateforis with another art minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. Lida [Leeda] Abdul begins her 2005 video “White House” by training her camera on several bombed structures near Kabul, Afghanistan.The stark landscape includes the remains of a classical structure with a huge, broken concrete slab resting on shattered pillars. In the next sequence, most of the wreckage is coated with white paint and Abdul, dressed in the long, dark robes of a traditional Afghani woman, is methodically painting white everything in her path—even the rocks and rubble on the ground. Eventually a ghost-like man, also clothed in black, enters the scene. He turns to face the whitewashed ruins and Abdul paints his back with the same deliberation she used brushing the ruins and rocks. The video closes with a herd of goats playfully exploring the site.

Lida Abdul is one of an emerging group of transnational artists whose work explores how humans deal with contemporary violence, destruction, and dislocation. “White House” can be admired simply for its formal beauty. But through the complex and multilayered issues it raises, this work invites us to look again, look longer, look deeper. With thanks to Mary Dusenbury for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.