ART BASEL QATAR 2026

Living in diaspora has shaped my relationship to memory, place, and belonging. My work explores what persists from the past, the turbulence of displacement, and the act of reorienting oneself within new environments. Working across video, sculpture, painting, and installation, I examine—through both humor and tragedy—how historical narratives are constructed, rewritten, and lived. In doing so, I aim to resist the erasure of memory while using my experience of physical displacement as a critical lens through which to question dominant histories and modes of belonging.

On (2023) – Part of King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture – Ithra collection – Art Prize winner Galerie Tanit is proud to present THE REVOLT, a small-scale presentation of a larger ongoing multidisciplinary project by Helsinki-based Iraqi-Finnish artist Adel Abidin. This focused selection revisits the Zanj Rebellion (869–883 CE) — a fourteen-year uprising and one of the earliest and most complex revolts in early Islamic history, carried out by enslaved Southeast Africans in southern Iraq. Driven by his longstanding curiosity to draw connections between contemporary and historical events, Abidin turns his attention to the earliest and most complex uprisings of enslaved Africans: the Zanj Rebellion. Beginning in Basra, southern Iraq, in 869 CE, the Zanj—Bantu people forcibly taken from the East African coast—were enslaved and compelled to drain salt marshes and mine salt under brutal conditions. The violence of this system, and the resistance it provoked, offers a critical lens for understanding the global structures of labor exploitation and displacement that persist today.

THE REVOLT seeks to restore the voices of the Zanj through forms that merge material, memory, and imagination. It underscores the centrality of oral storytelling in both Arab and African cultures, recognizing how history is shaped by those who record it, and how much is obscured when only the victors’ narratives endure. Across its chapters, the project inviting audiences to confront the historical foundations of present-day inequalities and to reconsider what archives, testimony, and remembrance can mean.

The Zanj Rebellion (869–883 CE) stands as one of the longest and most consequential uprisings against systemic oppression in early Islamic history. Centered in the marshlands of southern Iraq, the revolt spanned fourteen years and was driven by the enslaved Bantu peoples’ pursuit of dignity, justice, and freedom amid extreme labor and dehumanization under the Abbasid Caliphate. Their struggle not only challenged the economic and social structures of the time, but also left a lasting imprint on the history of resistance in the medieval Islamic world.

About the Artist Adel Abidin (b. 1973, Baghdad, Iraq) earned a Bachelor’s degree in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts, Baghdad (2000), and a Master’s degree in Time and Space Art from the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki (2007).

Abidin represented Finland at the 52nd Venice Biennale (2007) and participated in the Iraq Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). He has also taken part in major international biennials, including the 11th Cairo Biennale, the 17th Biennale of Sydney, the 4th Moscow Biennale, and Sharjah Biennial 10 (2011). His work has been exhibited internationally at the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Denmark), Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha), the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), and The New Museum (New York).

His works are held in major public collections, including Qatar Museums, Kiasma, Mathaf, Ithra, the NGV, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, alongside numerous private collections worldwide. Adel has received several prestigious awards, including the Ithra Art Prize (Saudi Arabia, 2023), Alumni of the Year at the University of the Arts Helsinki (2022), the Finland Prize for Visual Arts (2015), and an Ars Fennica nomination (2011).