Bani Abidi’s @bani_abidi ‘Society for aching bodies’ is part of her solo ‘Fragments From a Nightmare’ at Frieze @friezeofficial London 2024.
On the 26th of October, 2023 Abidi hosted an impromptu gathering for thirty people at her home in Berlin. She WhatsApped a whole bunch of old friends and new acquaintances: “on Thursday I will cook a meal for all aching bodies, please come with a text, a poem, a conversation…that can hold our hand through this time of grief and exhaustion.”
Abidi hosted many such dinners, only with the offer of wholesome meals on hand. Her first artistic response to this seismic moment was to look at these gatherings and conversations as kinds of secret testimonials. ‘Society for aching bodies’ is a set of drawings of some of these dinners, referencing the language of courtroom drawings.
The drawings evolved over eight months, and as the dangers and subjugation of anti-genocide voices has grown, so did the desire to hide the faces of all the people who had gathered in mourning.
Work on view:
Bani Abidi, Society for aching bodies (26.10, 2023, Berlin, Soli Dinner), Pastel on paper, 11 3/4 x 16 1/2 in, 2024.
