When Osama Bin Laden’s compound was demolished in 2012, a BBC article stated, “No official reason for the demolition has been given. Residents around the compound have speculated that authorities do not want it turned into a shrine.”
A simple search for the compound will yield scale replicas in the United States, China and Afghanistan and numerous models both virtual and physical.
The demolition of the original compound however did not prevent its proliferation as a site, and the possibility of its memorialization and shrine-hood. The tools of control and surveillance responsible for the existence and and then demolition of the compound and its replicas are in turn vital to its expansion and symbolic suspension in memory.
Landscapes Without Bodies, 2019 is part of a developing body of work inquiring into the normalization of militarization and its forms of violence through an examination of memorials, replicas and digital shrine-hood.
Biography
Anamika Singh (born. 1995) is an artist and graphic designer based in New York, USA. She graduated with a BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art. Her work focuses on the effects of the militarization through an inquiry into replicas, simulations, and monuments; directly reflecting on the digital condition, and its mediation of subjectivity, Singh is invested in exploring the bio- political through subjects of intimacy, scale, and appropriation. Singh was a recipient of the Benjamin Menschel Fellowship Grant in 2016 and a fellow at Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace Program 2017-18 in Beirut, Lebanon.