Meem Gallery in Dubai is now holding an exhibition of artist Adel Abidin, The Musical Manifest, which will be open to viewers until June 30th, 2022. It is an audio-visual challenge, a series of six distinctive music videos, representing people who have been forced to leave their countries and homes due to various reasons. The videos make fictional references to the artist’s past before he emigrated to Finland, picturing the surrealism and absurdity of our common time.
In these music videos, Adel Abidin is the actor and singer of his own stories. Using an absurd and ironic visual language, he tries to trigger everyday emotions. The artist has combined lyrics of various pop songs to express what people hide or are afraid of mentioning. The songs sound peculiar and odd as if lost in translation. Their original meanings and messages change as soon as they mix with other lines.
“I work with the themes of identity, power, fear, clichés, slippages, and uncertainties in language by manipulating well-known pop song lyrics once used to express love, hope, and dreams,” says Adel Abidin.
Adel Abidin was born in Baghdad in 1973 and now lives between Helsinki and Amman. He received a B.A. in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad (2000) and an M.F.A from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki (2005).
Meem Gallery is a leading international venue in the management and promotion of modern and contemporary Arab, North African and Iranian art. The gallery was founded by Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, Mishal Hamed Kanoo and Charles Pocock in 2005. Various solo and group exhibitions with a special focus on regional modern masters, including Dia Azzawi, Kamal Boullata and Parviz Tanavoli, are held throughout the year. Artworks of innovative contemporary artists such as Armen Agop, Zhivago Duncan and Mahmoud Obaidi, are exhibited in Meem Gallery.
To learn more about the exhibition, please visit its official webpage.
