In an era defined by violence, displacement and environmental crisis, the question of what survives  catastrophe has become increasingly urgent. Through this new  body of work,  Adel Abidin returns to painting to investigate how  trauma inscribes itself  upon landscape, memory, and collective consciousness. Throughout these  distinct works,  the horizon line emerges as a constant yet mutable presence—sometimes a stark  divider, elsewhere a blurred boundary—guiding viewers through varied territories of loss and persistence.

 The triptych Drift  serves as a cornerstone of the exhibition, where a destroyed vessel sprawls across multiple canvases. What begins in the central panel expands leftward, the fragmented ship becoming a meditation on wreckage and remains. As refugees walk  towards the persistent horizon, the scattered debris and mapping of loss across space prove foundational to the series, establishing both formal and thematic elements that echo throughout the exhibition.

In the painting Displaced, two ethereal blue  forms—suggesting alien engines—descend into an entangled landscape of fractured lines and organic debris.  At the center, displaced figures gaze upward at a tent that is transformed into a luminous cloud—suggesting a promise of escape from the crumbling ruined Earth beneath them. This scene merges mankind’s expulsion and dispossession with the transcendent.

Metamorphosis is a meditation on displacement and survival, where traces of the natural and the human are transformed into shapes that speak to memory, loss, and endurance. It unfolds as a shifting landscape where

organic and abstract forms intertwine. Lines and fragments spread across the surface, dissolving clear horizons and creating a sense of movement between disintegration and renewal.

Aquarium is a diptych that explores the idea of contained catastrophe through its distinct aquatic environment, where fragments of industrial remnants and organic forms drift in an aqueous atmosphere suggesting both submersion and isolation. The work reflects on how  tragedy becomes spectacle, and how  containment shapes our perception and relationship to catastrophic events.

Above  the Abyss offers a hesitantly hopeful vision: a spectral vessel glows in the upper right while figures hover  at the edge  of a vast void. Suspended between escape and peril, they  exist in a space neither ground nor sky—a terrain so profoundly altered that it resembles an artificial spaceship more than natural landscape.

While these  landscapes and seascapes possess a deliberate universality—they could be anywhere displacement and loss have left their mark—nevertheless, they  are also deeply informed by Abidin's formative years in Iraq. The quality

of light, the relationship between water and land, the specific texture of destruction—all carry echoes  of Iraqi terrain, though transformed through memory and artistic vision  into spaces that speak to global experiences of destruction and loss.

Each painting offers its own  meditation on displacement, united by the horizon's role as both geographical marker and psychological opening. While

one canvas might present the horizon as a wound across a fractured landscape, another transforms it into a liminal space where mechanical debris and human figures hover  between existence and erasure. These distinct approaches to the horizon create a dialogue between works, speaking to different aspects of dislocation and survival.

The composite sculptural work What Remains, stands as a physical manifestation of Abidin's painted territories of loss and persistence. Like preserved ruins  that tell stories  of both destruction and endurance, this work transforms the exhibition's painted testimonies into three-dimensional form. Mounted on parallel wooden beams that echo the fractured horizons of his paintings, the installation's components seem to float between two worlds, where mechanical debris and fractured landscapes hover  between existence and erasure.

The power of these  works resonates with poignant meditations on cultural collapse throughout history. Like the preserved ruins  of Pompeii, where an entire civilization stands frozen in ash, these  paintings capture moments suspended between existence and obliteration. In their stark  horizons and fractured landscapes, they  echo T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Wasteland," a modernist vision  of a world of broken images and fallen towers, where mountains appear and disappear in the brown fog of a desolate terrain. Abidin's paintings, like Eliot's verses, reveal how  desert visions and mirages can speak truth about trauma and chaos.

Drawing from his position as a diaspora artist working between cultures, Abidin transforms the condition of dislocation into a universal meditation on survival and renewal. His return to painting amid our current global crises proves  particularly resonant—the medium itself  becomes a way of preserving and processing collective trauma, much as ruins  continue to tell stories  of both destruction and persistence.

"What Remains" ultimately asks us to consider what persists when the familiar falls away. In these  painted testimonies, memory becomes a repository of loss but also a source  of regeneration. Through these  works,  we witness how  remembrance itself  can become an act of resistance, transforming apocalyptic ruins  of the past into foundations for imagining new futures.

by Dr. Tamara Chalabi

Adel Abidin

Helsinki-based artist Adel Abidin (b. 1973, Baghdad) is known for his sharp, ironic, and thought-provoking explorations of history, identity, politics, and cultural alienation. His work blends humor with critical reflection, engaging with themes of conflict, memory, and displacement across various mediums.

Since representing Finland at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007), Abidin has exhibited worldwide, with major showings at MAC/VAL  (Paris), Kiasma (Helsinki), Mori  Art Museum (Tokyo), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark), and Mathaf (Doha). His works have been featured in major biennales, including Venice, Sydney, Sharjah, Cairo, and Moscow. His art is held in prominent collections such as Kiasma, NGV (Melbourne), Ithra (Saudi Arabia), Sharjah Art Foundation, and Barjeel Art Foundation.

Recently, Abidin premiered two significant works in 2024: The Revolt, a study on

the Zanj Rebellion in Basra (869–883 AD), and They Were Here. Expanding his artistic practice, he has returned to painting after years of abandoning the medium, using it as a new  tool to further his critical research.

A recipient of numerous awards, he won the Ithra Art Prize (2023) and the Finland Prize for Visual Arts (2015) and was an Ars Fennica nominee (2012). He has also contributed to academia, delivering lectures at UNESCO, Aalto University, and Darat al Funun.

Abidin continues to challenge global narratives, using art as a lens to dissect power, consumerism, and the contradictions of contemporary life.