Injuries Are Here. Attia draws on a broad range of media from installations to photography and video for his striking explorations of clashes and exchanges between culture, politics, and identity.
Curator Nicole Schweizer
The Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts is hosting a major exhibition showcasing
the French-Algerian artist Kader Attia (born in 1970 in Dugny, near Paris, now
lives and works in Berlin and Algiers). The event, curated in close collabora
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tion with the artist himself, is his first solo exhibition in Switzerland.
Kader Attia draws on a broad range of media from installations to photography
and video for his striking explorations of clashes and exchanges between culture,
politics, and identity. His artistic research is heavily influenced by his own expe
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rience of growing up in France and Algeria and time spent as an adult in Venezuela
and Congo. His work offers a poetic yet highly explicit reading of the relationships
between Western thought and non-Western cultures, particularly through architec
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ture, the human body, history, and culture.
Kader Attia’s work over a span of nearly two decades reveals a growing preoccu
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pation with the issue of
repair
, understood in its twofold meaning of repairing an
object or healing a wound and making recompense for the harm done. This
explains the significance in his oeuvre of the object and the archive as tangible
traces of History and of wounds that demand reparation. He turns the installation
space not only into a memorial space, but also a place for rethinking the intrinsic
bonds linking political, personal, and aesthetic (hi)stories that at first glance might
appear to be unconnected. The Lausanne exhibition offers a rich panorama of
Attia’s oeuvre, from his installations, videos, and slide shows to his canvases and
collages.
Kader Attia is a well-established name in the contemporary art world, drawing inter
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national attention at the fiftieth Venice Biennale in 2003, the eighth Lyon Biennale
in 2005, and dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel in 2012, alongside numerous solo exhi
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bitions in Boston, Beirut, Berlin, Paris, New York, London, and elsewhere. Yet to
date there has been no solo exhibition of his work in Switzerland. The Musée des
Beaux-Arts in Lausanne is delighted to be hosting the first exhibition to showcase
Kader Attia’s art in the country as part of its series of solo exhibitions devoted to
major contemporary artists, with past events including artists of the stature of Tom
Burr, Alfredo Jaar, Renée Green, Nalini Malani, and Esther Shalev-Gerz.
The catalogue is a major reference work in French and English, edited by Nicole
Schweizer, with essays by Noémie Etienne (Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fel
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low, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York) and Kobena Mercer
(Department of the History of Art, Yale University, New Haven), and an interview
with the artist by Monique Jeudy-Ballini and Brigitte Derlon (CNRS, Laboratoire
d’anthropologie sociale, Collège de France, Paris).
Kader Attia
Born in 1970 in Dugny (Seine-Saint-Denis, France), lives and works in Berlin and
Algiers.
Image: Culture, Another Nature Repaired, 2014. Wood sculptures. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Nagel Draxler. Photo credits: Simon Vogel
Press contact
Loïse Cuendet Tel: +41 (0)21 3163448 loise.cuendet@vd.ch
Opening: Thursday, 21 May 2015, 6.30 pm
Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne
Palais de Rumine Place de la Riponne 6 CH - 1014 Lausanne
Hours:
Tuesday – Friday: 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Saturday – Sunday: 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Monday : closed, except
Whit Monday, 25 May : 11 a.m – 5 p.m. 8 June : 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Admission
Adults: CHF 10.–
Pensioners, students, apprentices: CHF 8.–
Under 16: free
1st Saturday of the month free