Artist Biography
Bani Abidi was born in Karachi, Pakistan, in 1971. She graduated from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan in 1994. From 1997 she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, completing a master's degree in 1999. Working primarily in video, Abidi seeks to address issues of national and cultural identity in relation to the history of Pakistan and India's partition as well as the broad impact of American culture and power in a global context. Since 1996 Abidi has shown her work extensively in exhibitions and film festivals internationally and has participated in numerous residency programs. In 2005 her work was exhibited in Beyond Borders, Art from Pakistan at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, India, and she participated in the Third Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan. Bani Abidi lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan.
Works
Shan Pipe Band learns the Star-spangled Banner 2004
Reconstruction 2003
So he starts singing 2003
Artist Statement
Shan Pipe Band learns the Star-spangled Banner, 2004, documents a Pakistani brass pipe band struggling to learn the American national anthem. I commissioned the musicians to learn the piece and videotaped them in their studio while they did so. These bands, which are remnants of the colonial Scottish Pipe Bands, no longer perform for military parades; instead they perform Bollywood tunes at weddings. Pakistan has been a crucial accomplice in the war currently being waged against multiple nations by the United States, and both video works showing at the National Gallery of Victoria address the present political and cultural climate in slightly different ways.
