Nadia Kaabi-Linke

Nadia Kaabi-Linke (born 1978) is a Tunis-born, Berlin-based visual artist best known for her conceptual art and 2011 sculpture Flying Carpets. Her work has explored themes of geopolitics, immigration, and transnational identities. Raised between Tunis, Kyiv, Dubai and Paris, she studied at the Tunis Institute of Fine Arts and received a Ph.D. in philosophy of art from the Sorbonne. Kaabi-Linke won the 2011 Abraaj Group Art Prize, which commissioned Flying Carpets, a hanging cage-like sculpture that casts geometric shadows onto the floor akin to the carpets of Venetian street vendors. The piece was acquired by the New York Guggenheim in 2016 as part of their Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. Kaabi-Linke also won the Discoveries Prize for emerging art at the 2014 Art Basel Hong Kong. Her works have been collected by the Museum of Modern Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Burger Collection, and Samdani Art Foundation, and exhibited in multiple solo and group shows.

Early life and career

Nadia Kaabi-Linke was born in Tunis in 1978. She is of Ukrainian and Tunisian heritage,

Work

In Kaabi-Linke's 2009 installation, Under Standing Over Views, paint chips from city walls in Tunis, Kyiv, Paris, Berlin, Cologne and other Tunisian cities are positioned horizontally and suspended from the ceiling in a cluster. Caitlin Woolsey of Jadaliyya wrote that the work recalled city development-induced displacement policies and symbolized the mass that formed the United Arab Emirates, the country where the piece was installed (Sharjah Art Museum). Kaabi-Linke said that her work is "unintentionally autobiographical".

The 2011 Abraaj Group Art Prize commissioned Kaabi-Linke's Flying Carpets the same year. The Museum of Modern Art and Samdani Art Foundation also acquired work by Kaabi-Linke.

Among prior works, the artist's 2014 exhibition at the London Mosaic Rooms featured a video piece, No, in which a disembodied mouth chants questions from an immigration visa interrogation, to which church congregants chant the replies. She was granted USD 100,000 to create work for the Diryah Contemporary Art Biennale.

Personal life

Kaabi-Linke is married "Walk the Line", Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas, 2015 "The Future Rewound & The Cabinet of Souls", Mosaic Rooms, London, 2014

Group "But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa", Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2016 "Chkoun Ahna", National Museum of Carthage, Tunis, May 2012