Maitha Abdalla, Boudoir, 2020
360° video with soundtrack
Filming: Sarra’a Al Shehhi
Editing: Dom Dowbekin
Maitha Abdalla’s performance work Boudoir is set in a shell of a building. Once a home, it now stands door and windowless - long abandoned, invaded by the surrounding sand and the billowing wind of the desert. Within this once private house two young women enact a kind of ritual, seemingly unaware of the house’s precarious and now exposed stage. A rooster and a pig’s head, a male effigy and a tray of food offerings inhabit the stage. For Abdalla each element of the tableaux is a precise symbol - representing sin and forgiveness, guilt and truth.
Basing her art on an interest in the notion of sin, and a wide gap between outward actions and inner feelings, interwoven with the folkloric tales of her grandmother: “whenever you hear a rooster, there are angels nearby, and you can ask God for forgiveness…” the artist explores the cultural beliefs that dictate behaviour in harsh physical environments. Through small gestures, and the artist’s merging of the original and the prop, together with these beliefs as objects orbit one another, the real and the fantastic merging, expressions escaping their private realities to become uncovered and debunked.
Boudoir was part of In The Round, a programme of performance art curated by Rose Lejeune for Abu Dhabi Art.
