Mariam Ghani

Property of the artist

Mariam Ghani’s current Series was produced as research for and stills from the two-channel video 'A Brief History of Collapses' (2011-12) commissioned for dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel and Kabul, 2012. The two-channel video symmetrically explores the historical trajectories and conceptual juxtaposition of two buildings in the two sites of dOCUMENTA (13): The Fridericianum built in 1779 in Kassel and Dar Ul-Aman Palace built in 1929 in Kabul. The present lot is drawn from the Kabul side of the project and closely follows the camera work of the video.

The Dar Ul-Aman Palace was built by King Amanullah as part of a project to embody a utopian city for modernization and progressive ideals. The Palace is now in ruins and instead of its intended purpose it has been occupied in a variety of ways throughout wars and revolutions, appropriated and epitomized conflicting ideals. Through the trajectory of the two buildings, their demise and recent reconstruction of one now as a museum, the viewer is taken on a multi layered immersive experience of the formation of a collective national identity, with its historical facts, ideals, myths and a narrative that is part history part story telling.

The architecture of the Dar Al-Aman (meaning abode for peace) also has structural similarities to the Fridericianum, in Kassel, Germany, as its architecture was directly influenced by principles of 18^th century German neoclassicism. Both buildings were built as edifices to open up their respective societies and through the passage of the women followed by the camera, we continue to mourn the ruin of those edifices through the turn of historical events and changes of the dominating forces, both as architectural structures and as carriages for progressive ideas and direction shifts of the zeitgeist.

Catalogue note written by Maneli Keykavoussi