Of laughter and reclaiming

In Bani Abidi's art, laughter is the plumb line, and the title of her sweeping retrospective at Berlin's Gropius-Bau (6 June – 22 September 2019) also suggests so. Sarcasm, satire, irony, and a constant dialogue with the absurd have played an important role in Abidi's work over the past two decades. Such intellectual work induces a certain kind of knowing laughter. What we also glimpse through her work is the multitude of ways in which its cast of characters strives to attain a state where laughter is effortless, carefree and a product of uncomplicated happiness. As Abidi's career evolves, her subjects, attempting to laugh this freer kind of laugh, typically traverse a cityscape that is exhausting, constricting, yet – at unexpected moments – freeing.  Equally typically, their attempts invoke, in us viewers, laughter that is biting and cerebral. Depending on our inclination, this laughter can be tinged by an affection for the absurd, rendered by the artist as familiar and recognisable.

Guided by Abidi's strong presence in these works, we laugh at, in the absence of much to laugh with. Yet from that gap arises the urgent realisation that we must, or at the very least we must aspire to, laugh with each other. In her most recent works, an affective hesitancy creeps in, deferring both modes of laughter to a time to come, when a current state of uncertainty will have, hopefully, sorted itself out. Perhaps, when that time does come, we will die laughing, again. Natasha Ginwala's intelligent and empathic curation of this high-quality body of work ensures an immersive experience where we learn through laughter and reclaiming—in this we are led by the people Abidi focuses on, her interpretation of their acts of survival and resistance, and of us, the visitors to Gropius Bau.