ABOUT
Rima has lived in Beirut, New York and is now settled in Berlin. She speaks French in an Arabic accent, English in a French accent and Arabic in a Lebanese accent.
Even though Najdi is a modern day polyglot, for some reason, she has difficulty finding the words to describe herself as an artist.
The first time Rima felt she was a remarkable, exceptional, amazing, astonishing, astounding, marvelous, wonderful, incredible, unbelievable, phenomenal, outstanding, unusual performer was when she stepped off the airplane onto US soil where she was randomly selected for a security check. She knew she had to be attractive considering this continued to be the case at JFK airport. Najdi first felt influential when she was dancing on stage and her professor suddenly started to cry, though she learned shortly after that it was because of the breaking news that the prime minister of Lebanon was assassinated. Regardless, the experience still encouraged, boosted, pumped, inflated her ego, and gave her the impression that she was destined to move people.
Rima Najdi's work occupies and (re)negotiates in-between spaces. She grapples with the ways in which identity is constructed and perceived, focusing on the lived experience of the body. She is interested in the vulnerability of the body in relation to the politicized tropes of gender, safety, mobility and representation. She thinks it is much more interesting and rewarding to change a performance process live than to have everything memorized, regurgitated, restated, reiterated, recited, parroted. She would rather play, replay, re-re-play, re-re-re-play, re-re-re-re-replay, re- re-re-re-re-replay...
