In her work the artist Adidal Abou-Chamat addresses feelings of foreignness and otherness as well as the search for one’s own cultural identity.
And yet, it’s not just about cultural differences and idiosyncrasies. She also addresses gender-specific stereotypes, prejudices and clichés and renders them visible on the male, the female and the queer body. Her protagonists’ skin colour, clothes and habitus speak of questions of difference, of identity, of cultural and ethnic dominance as well as forms of marginalisation and stigmatisation. She tends to employ strategies of ironic shifts and alienation, so that the complex relationships between exoticising admiration and multi-faceted forms of discrimination can emerge. (Susanne Jakob)