Recap of Lawrence Abu Hamdan at Tate Modern
By Piers Masterson
Still image from LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN’s
The cavernous Tanks in the basement of the Tate Modern made an appropriate setting on October 4 for experiencing Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s film installation Walled Unwalled followed by his live sound performance After SFX (both 2018), products of his ongoing research into political terror in authoritarian states. Prior to its conversion to the Tate Modern, the redundant Bankside Power Station featured in a 1995 film adaptation of Richard III as a stand-in for the Tower of London, the most iconic historical prison in the United Kingdom. Abu Hamdan’s body of work often fixes on such coincidences and interrelations as it maps out how mechanisms developed to protect the state from external threats are turned against its citizens.
