Fathia Mohidin

In Fathia Mohidin’s work, the familiar attributes of the gym – glossy pilates balls, the rubber-scent of a floor mat – set the stage for a consideration of how bodies move together, whether training or dancing; from your everyday workout to Detroit’s techno culture and the post-industrial spaces from which it emerged. During the Luleå Biennial, Mohidin, who works across a number of different media, will present the work WAVE, a six-channel sound installation accompanied by the video work KIN. As exercise and other bodily movements take place, an ambiguous tension between control and freedom begs the question why and for whose sake certain bodies are expected to be strong.

Mohidin examines how the past is written, and by unconventional means makes her own intervention into that writing process: first, by listening – that unique and underestimated sensory ability – and then by using myth to challenge inherited notions of what is real and realistic. If Detroit has become a mythological place in the history of techno, how might we also employ myth and its a fusion of historiography and vision as a tool to create an alternative narrative about ourselves?

Like the party spaces of Detroit, Havremagasinet is a former site of labour. What is the difference between the strength and the work performed in WAVE and that exerted by horses and humans in the same rooms 100 years ago? Here, both work and strength are open concepts that take on a new meaning depending on the narrative they take part in, and in Mohidin they are united in movement – rhythmic repetition offering a way for people to transcend to an at once magical and mechanical state.

The sound piece is made together with Adele Kosman.

Fathia Mohidin (b. 1985) is an artist who lives and works in Stockholm.
Adele Kosman (f. 1993) is a composer who lives and works in Stockholm.

Work

WAVE, 2020
6-channel sound, diamond plate rubber mat, rubber scent, pilates balls

KIN, 2020
HD Video

Location

Havremagasinet, Boden
21.11–14.2