Attia’s 2012 installation The Repair from Occident to Extra- Occidental Cultures was one of the absolute high points of the dOCUMENTA (13) show and marked the genesis of a continually expanding series of works on the arresting theme of ‘Repair’, which the artist explores in his signature style. Through his installations, Attia shows observers how the meaning ascribed to objects and materials grows and coalesces throughout history, and how this reflects in cultural interaction, often in the context of colonial domination or conflict.
The exhibition ‘Culture, Another Nature Repaired’ at the Middelheim Museum consists of two parts.
Thirteen new wooden sculptures
Les gueules cassées (the broken faces)
Attia will exhibit thirteen new wooden sculptures in Het Huis. These bust arise from the artist’s collaboration with traditional craftsmen from Bamako (Mali) and Brazzaville (Congo). They were inspired by a series of photographs of soldiers who were badly disfigured during World War I. Many of them were drafted from the colonies.
The portraits of mutilated war victims do more than just reveal the brutish nature of urgent medical treatment one hundred years ago. Under Attia’s touch, they are transformed into a new representation of human existence, forged from the fusion of influences from African-Arabian and Western sculpture. In these two cultures, the ethics and aesthetics of the human body are understood and experienced in two entirely different ways. Attia draws from both to create a new and inventive hybrid.
Installation Untitled (Al Aqsa)
The other part of the exhibition consists of the installation Untitled (Al Aqsa), which dates from 2009 when it debuted at the Tuileries in Paris. The reference in the title instantly calls to mind the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. In light of the recent conflict in the region, the title lends the work a profound and political meaning regarding the Israel-Palestine question.
350 cymbals on steel rods
The composition of cymbals on steel rods evokes an equal association with plants or water lilies, making not only its installation in the museum’s former flower garden logical, but also its place within the Western sculptural traditions of land art and sound sculptures: the wind and rain ensure that the installation engages in dialogue with the natural elements and serves as their extension.
The 350 cymbals sway back and forth like bronze leaves, inviting visitors to make contact with pebbles and coins. That makes the installation the object of musical and simultaneously silent contemplation, a piece that makes us think about our place within the natural world and about the contempt with which we treat it today.
Practical information
Kader Attia. Culture, Another Nature Repaired
- From 25 October 2014 through 29 March 2015, 10:00–17:00 (Closed on Mondays, 1 November, 25 December and 1 January)
- Location: Middelheim Museum (the Het Huis pavilion)
- Opening: 25 October 2014 at 14:30
- Admission: free of charge
Free tour on Sunday 29 March 2015 from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m.
Meeting point: at the castle (reception) at 1.45 p.m.
Artist talk
- 25 October 2014 at 12.30 p.m.
- Venue: UA Campus Groenenborger, Aula T.105 (Groenenborgerlaan 171, 2020 Antwerp)