Giorgio Persano Gallery is pleased to present We Do Not Want to Become Legendary Because We’ll Disappear, a solo exhibition by Lida Abdul. The exhibition explores the theme of identity, poised between memory and oblivion, through a series of photographic works conceived in Kabul between 2005 and 2013.
Lida Abdul describes herself as a nomadic artist. Due to the wars that have torn apart her country of origin, Afghanistan, Abdul’s life has been marked by constant displacement. Her work addresses the legacy of these conflicts, exploring the relationship between the fixity of identity and the unstoppable dynamism of life, as well as the issues of exile and political resistance.
The exhibition opens with a large photograph from 2008 in which children play with an old Russian military aircraft on the outskirts of Kabul, showing how the beauty and innocence of play can provide an antidote to tragedy. In the photographs from the series Brick Sellers of Kabul (2006), a line of children is engaged in rebuilding a cubic sculpture using bricks recovered from the surrounding ruins. The scene, which takes place during a sandstorm, conveys the surrealism and suspended temporality of a moment in which destruction and reconstruction intertwine in a ritual. The series White House (2005), in which a man seen from behind contemplates the ruins of an institutional building destroyed by an American bombing, is the result of a performative process in which the artist paints the rubble white – a highly symbolic colour. In Islamic culture, white is associated with mourning; in Catholic culture, with peace. White is also the colour of oblivion, as well as – as the title ironically suggests – that of the building symbolising American power. White House therefore confronts us with the irreducible complexity of any process of coming to terms with the past.
Finally, in Time, Love and the Workings of Anti-Love II (2013–2017), Abdul collects and enlarges several passport photographs found during a research trip to the country in 2010, belonging to a local street photographer. The images, taken during the years of conflict, bear witness to the consequences of war on the concrete lives of those involved, and to the stories and hopes concealed behind their gazes. Once again, at the centre lies the tension between stillness and movement, the inextricable interweaving of collective memory and oblivion.
Lida Abdul (Kabul, 1973) lives and works in Los Angeles.
Lida Abdul: We Do Not Want to Become Legendary Because We’ll Disappear
Mar 10 – May 24, 2026
Giorgio Persano Gallery
Turin, Italy
