Investigating the processes by which images lapse from the field of visibility, Attia reflects on hypervisibility as a strategy of blinding and erasing. Drawing on Algerian psychoanalyst Karima Lazali’s work around erasure, Kader Attia will explore further how the Deep State (effectively the imperial machine) is able to perversely mobilize bureaucrats as well as citizens in erasing visual traces of crimes it has committed.
Kader Attia was born in 1970 in Dugny, France. Raised in Paris and Algeria, he studied philosophy and art at the École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré and the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, as well as at the Escola Massana, Art and Design Centre in Barcelona, Spain. Before his studies, he spent several years in Africa and South America; today he lives and works in Berlin and Paris. For over two decades, Kader Attia has worked with the concept of ‘repair’ in his artistic practice. It allows him to investigate the dialectic between destruction and repair, in which repair is understood as a way of cultural resistance as well as a means for a society or a subject to reappropriate their history and identity. In 2016, Attia founded La Colonie in Paris’ 10th arrondissement as a space for the exchange of ideas and discussions focusing on decolonization, not only of people but also of knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Driven by the urgency of social and cultural reparation, La Colonie aims to reunite what has drifted apart or been broken. Since March 2020, the space has been closed to the public due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In English
Organized by
Arab Fund for Arts and Culture – AFAC
In collaboration with the ICI Berlin and in partnership with EUME/Forum Transregionale Studien
Curated by Tarek El-Ariss and Rasha Salti
