"He grew up between the French capital and Bab el Oued, a suburb of Algiers in Algeria, and his Algerian-French identity and the culture and history of Europe and North Africa-the global north and south-have profoundly informed his subject matter and materials. His work across three decades in photography, collage, sculpture, installation and sound, is concerned with a central concept: repair. By association, the notion of repair is inevitably connected with violence and injury."
"Within this overarching theme, he explores political and social issues in the present and the complex legacies of colonialism. While directly addressing particular historical and current moments, his work is rich in metaphor, and he considers this poetic aspect crucial to art's ability to effect social change. Attia regards his output as the evidence of an ongoing process of research, but despite its fundamentally philosophical and textual genesis, it is often dramatic visually and experientially."
Kader Attia was born in 1970 in Dugny, France, and lives in Berlin and Paris. He grew up between Paris and Bab el Oued in Algiers, and his Algerian-French identity and the histories of Europe and North Africa shape his materials and subject matter. His multidisciplinary practice across photography, collage, sculpture, installation and sound centers on the concept of repair, which is intimately linked to violence and injury. He examines political and social issues and colonial legacies using metaphor and poetic strategies aimed at social change. He reflects on menemonic traces, treats the gaze as a bodily phenomenon, and draws on travels to Congo and Mexico, Michelangelo's drawings, writers such as Karima Lazali, Édouard Glissant and Aimé Césaire, and the cathartic power of music. The studio functions as a site for continued research and experiential drama.
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