Rima Najdi: CONFESSION #1

»Confession#1 an ongoing work on a lecture performance that aims to research the imaginaire around Arab women created through their attire. In this series I recycle material from a previous performance Dress ME how YOU like, wearing the clothes to travel to Lebanon from Berlin. Visit villages in the southern area of Lebanon pose next what became landmarks in 2006, make a costume party at a family dinner, then photoshop myself to some touristic destination in the Arab world. I kept a personal journal during the process. During the lecture I display the photos and read from the personal journal.”

Part of  Urban Heat LAB #5, SURVIVAL NARRATIVES: Socio-economic Power Structures

Rima Najdi is a performance artist currently based in Berlin. She works across disciplines including performance, video, installation. Much of the motivation in her work stems from the curiosity to research the production of propositions that challenge and occupy inbetween spaces: spaces that exist perhaps only between the self and the other, reality and fiction, physicality and emotion. She focuses on the body as a tool and as a map of experiences and identity politics. She is interested in the vulnerabilities of one’s body looking at gender politics, safety, mobility and representation. A research for an act, a statement, a photo, an art work that questions issues such as stereotypes, identity, gender, failure of language, borders and its representations. Her art practice tackles identity politics (see: Dress ME how YOU like, and GRAPHIC WARNING: It is not ME it is YOU) and the dynamics that govern frames and gazes (see: Who are they? Who are we? and Madame Bomba: The TNT project). It is not the representation of identities that her work seeks, it is the unearthing of the governing dynamics and strategies. Najdi has a Diploma in Dramatic Arts from High Arts Institute, Lebanese University, 2008, and an MA in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, 2011.

www.rimanajdi.com