Interview with Adel Abidin – Padiglione Iraq – 54th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia
Adel Abidin was born in Baghdad, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts before moving to Helsinki, Finland in 2000. Having started his career as a painter, he began to work with video and completed an MF A in New Media at Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. Adding sculpture and installation to his repertoire, Abidin uses humour and irony to look at themes of cultural identity, marginalisation, nationalism, war, terror and heroism, surveying different experiences of living in a conflicted and precarious world. The works encourage us to reflect on culture, both our own and other people’s.