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Artworks

Sara Abdu Yemeni, b. 1993

The Unburdened is Untethered by what is not of him, 2021
Animation Video
Video duration: 6:28 min
Edition of 3 plus 1 artist's proof
Sara’s melancholic figures are animated for the first time and narrate a reflexive journey of the self. The film is inspired by a clear message she received in her dreams....
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Sara’s melancholic figures are animated for the first time and narrate a reflexive journey of the self. The film is inspired by a clear message she received in her dreams. الحر يَخلى مما ليس منهُ “The unburdened is untethered by what is not for him” Abdu immediately understood the message to mean movement for her figures. The missive from a different realm revealed a process of infinite being and becoming. The enigmatic and gloomy figure as a personification of melancholia is seen traversing expanded spaces and metamorphosizing into birds that eventually take flight. The journey of the birds recalls moments of departure that are inspired by the dance of birds that bid farewell to the prophet Dawood upon his passing. The film draws upon the common anthropomorphized symbol as a metaphor for the journey, the self, and reunion. From the depiction of birds in the Quran to the seminal work of Farid ud-Din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds, the bird was vessel for exploring the interior spaces of our psyche. Abdu’s morose lone figures were in a perpetual state of searching, and the revelation she receives from her dreams confirms its never-ending state. That memory, like the self, would not arrive to a particular destination, but was always in a state of revealing, of arriving, of becoming.
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