Dominating Adel Abdessemed’s first solo London exhibition is a 17 metre fibreglass skeleton, suspended horizontally from the Parasol Unit’s ceiling. Abdessemed says Habibi (Beloved) is a self portrait because, unlike Rodin’s seated Thinker, he thinks “laid flat out on my stomach in a position that resembles taking off or hovering”. Despite its size this could qualify as the most self-effacing self portrait, a magnification of what we all share – the skull beneath the skin – rather than a record of those features like eye colour and hair style that help to mark us out as individuals.
Abdessemed was born in Algeria but left to study art in France in 1994. The universality or anonymity of his self portrait seems to be reflected in an interview with Elisabeth Lebovici when he said “I do not live between two cultures. I am not a post-colonial artist…I am not mending anything. I am just a detector”.
An understandable desire to evade obvious labels that are often slapped on artists with links to countries outside Europe and North America does not mean that Abdessemed’s work avoids any theme that can evoke comparison with or memories of Algeria’s recent history when conflict between a government installed by military coup and Islamist opposition groups claimed upwards of 100,000 lives.
The way religion can affect our lives individually and collectively is the subject of Also Sprach Allah (Thus Spoke Allah), a title derived from Nietzsche’s book Thus Spoke Zarathustra in which he considers the death of God. (The book no doubt considers a lot of other things too of which I’m ignorant as I haven’t read it; I’ve just mentioned Nietzsche in a blog – 10/10 for pretension.)
Anyway apologies for the diversion and back to Abdessemed’s take on Nietzsche/God. His piece consists of a carpet/prayer mat and a video which records the artist writing Also Sprach Allah on the prayer mat via a process of being tossed up and down on blanket by a group of young men. Each time he flies up with reach of the ceiling where the prayer mat is suspended Abdessemed manages to ‘write’ a fragment of the message he wishes to convey.
This process of breaking up and frustrating what we tend to assume is a simple action –writing a message – is thought provoking in a number of ways. Watching someone being tossed about leads to fairly obvious thoughts about life being transient and hanging by a thread, allowing us only a limited but unknown amount of time to decide whether we’re going to risk saying what we truly think.
The emphasis placed on writing in Also Sprach Allah and the wonky, lopsided statement eventually produced by Abdessemed and his collaborators stands both as a link and a contrast to the beautiful calligraphy that plays such an important role in Islamic art and culture. Abdessemed’s wild shout seems to be the antithesis of the control and discipline expressed in the calligraphy of a medieval Quran or even the contemporary work of someone like Hassan Massoudy. What links the two is the struggle to get a message across, even to impose that message regardless of the consequences and whether it emerges from an artist’s studio or the turmoil of a society in the midst of a civil war.
Silent Warriors, the newest work in this exhibition, is on the same scale as the skeleton self portrait but makes its impact through repetition rather than sheer size. Composed of 800 plus masks made from discarded tin cans scavenged from across Africa the display occupies nearly an entire gallery floor. The cans once contained everything from chilli paste to insecticide, gathered together they form a schematic map of Africa’s trade routes and raw materials. All oval and roughly the same size viewed en masse the masks look like a collection of jewelled Faberge eggs or perhaps a menu in a virtuoso nail bar. On closer inspection they divide into two camps – those that look outwards, projecting their features into the room, and those that draw you in, inviting you to merge with their masquerade.
Like a lot of conceptual art some of Abdesemmed’s work make you feel as though you’ve arrived in the middle of a conversation without any apparent beginning or end. This ‘dialogue’ can lead you off in wildly different directions – alongside Also Sprach Allah which made me think of calligraphy and the rituals involved in Sufi ceremonies is another work that involves filming the process of making a mark on an object. Enter the circle shows Abdesemmed suspended by his ankles from a hovering helicopter as he struggles to draw a circle on a piece of MDF. My response to this was rather less elevated as it instantly reminded me of those old ‘all because the lady loves Milk Tray’ ads where Mr Hunk jumps out of helicopters and abseils down buildings to deliver a box of chocolates. But then that’s a reflection of the junk room in my mind rather than Abdesemmed’s.
Silent Warriors runs until 21st November 2010 at Parasol Unit, 14 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW
Image: Habibi by Adel Abdesemmed © Parasol Unit
