Artists

Kader Attia

Press release

Kader Attia (*1970 in Dugny, France) has spent many years exploring the principle of ‘repair’, which he views as a constant in both nature and the history of humanity. At the Berlinische Galerie, Attia presents a conversation between two large installations: “J’Accuse” (2016) and “The Object‘s Interlacing” (2020).

“J’Accuse” (2016) consists of seventeen wooden busts, eight sculptures and an eleven-minute excerpt from an anti-war film of the same name by French director Abel Gance (1889–1981). The busts portray ‘gueules cassées’ (broken faces), First World War soldiers who had suffered severe facial disfigurement. Here Attia continues to explore his concept of “repair”, which has been at the centre of his art for many years. In the video of “The Object‘s Interlacing”, Kader Attia builds a dialogue with various experts about the dabte on the topic of restitution of cultural assets violently looted during the colonial era. Together they construct an understanding of restitution as a practice of repair with far broader implications than simply repatriating objects looted from their place of origin.