LIDA ABDUL (Kabul, Afghanistan 1973. Lives and works in Los Angeles, USA and Kabul) “In my work, I try to juxtapose the space of politics with the space of reverie, the space of shelter with that of the desert; in all of this I try to perform the ‘blank spaces’ that are formed when everything is taken away from people” (Lida Abdul). The artist fled Afghanistan with her family following the Soviet invasion in 1979, and lived as refugee in India and Germany before immigrating to the United States, where she studied Political science and Philosophy. Her work fuses the tropes of Western formalism with the numerous aesthetic traditions - Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, pagan and nomadic - that collectively have influenced Afghan art and culture. Her work spans from video, film, photography, installation to live performance. She was the first artist of her country to represent Afghanistan at the 51st edition of the Venice Biennale in 2005, she was then selected to participate in numerous other Biennales and Triennales and won the Taiwan Award (2005), the Premio Pino Pascali (2005), the Prince Claus Award (2006), as well as the UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts (2007). She was a finalist of the First Edition of the Mario Merz Prize (2015). Her work are held in numerous public and private collections, including the Frac Lorraine, Metz; GAM, Turin, the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; the MOMA, New York, and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. Image courtesy of Giorgio Persano Gallery