kasbah
In this exhibition, Kader Attia invites us to walk on the installation «Kasbah», which replaces the floor of the exhibition space. This work is co-produced with the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Huarte.
«Kasbah» thus transforms the art center into roofs evoking the slums that exist all over the world. The work is made with recycled materials, forming a composition of corrugated sheets, tires, but also parabolas scattered here and there. The facility confronts us with these residues from the flows of the globalized economy, stranded and reinvested in areas of great poverty. Beyond the political observation, Kader Attia approaches through this work the amazing ability that men have to reclaim the world when they have nothing.
As often in his work, the aesthetic dimension dialogue with an ethical, political statement. More than ever, the artist physically and psychologically involves the viewer who, by surveying the rugged surface of the metal roofs, is referred to his position as a voyeur. By raising the ground by a few tens of centimeters, «Kasbah» also resembles a pedestal for the spectators who become, in turn, the sculptures supported by this pedestal and adopt a displaced point of view.
This work reconnects with the social role that roofs and terraces play in Mediterranean cultures. Thus, Kader Attia’s “Kasbah” becomes for a few months also a platform for exchanges of ideas and varied interventions: dance, conferences, seminar, exhibition, etc. are scheduled from April to November 2009.
The exhibition also presents the video «Oil and Sugar», as well as a series of unpublished photographs of the city of Ghardaîa in the Algerian desert. These images echo an installation in semolina that reconstructs the plan of this city of the 11th century that influenced Le Corbusier in the development of the Charter of Athens, a text laying the foundations of progressive urbanism and modernist aesthetics.
Extract from the press release (2009)
kader attia
The artist was born in 1970 in Dugny (Seine-Saint-Denis); he now lives and works in Berlin.
Kader Attia is one of the most highly acclaimed French artists from his generation. His spectacular installations act as whistle-blowers that reveal our social ills. Through a large variety of mediums (sculpture and installations being predominant), the artist of Algerian origin tackles social issues.
Although his work finds its roots in his personal experience as an immigrant, his approach to the fractures of our world becomes more and more universal. He deals with subjects such as feeling caught between two different cultures, the notions of uprooting, religion as a withdrawal into an exclusive community, and the relationship between global dominant cultures and emerging countries with a strong identity resistance.
From the “Kasbah” exhibition press release (2009)
Kader Attia is represented by the Galerie Nagel Draxler
In this exhibition, Kader Attia invites us to walk on the installation «Kasbah», which replaces the floor of the exhibition space. This work is co-produced with the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo de Huarte.
«Kasbah» thus transforms the art center into roofs evoking the slums that exist all over the world. The work is made with recycled materials, forming a composition of corrugated sheets, tires, but also parabolas scattered here and there. The facility confronts us with these residues from the flows of the globalized economy, stranded and reinvested in areas of great poverty. Beyond the political observation, Kader Attia approaches through this work the amazing ability that men have to reclaim the world when they have nothing.
As often in his work, the aesthetic dimension dialogue with an ethical, political statement. More than ever, the artist physically and psychologically involves the viewer who, by surveying the rugged surface of the metal roofs, is referred to his position as a voyeur. By raising the ground by a few tens of centimeters, «Kasbah» also resembles a pedestal for the spectators who become, in turn, the sculptures supported by this pedestal and adopt a displaced point of view.
This work reconnects with the social role that roofs and terraces play in Mediterranean cultures. Thus, Kader Attia’s “Kasbah” becomes for a few months also a platform for exchanges of ideas and varied interventions: dance, conferences, seminar, exhibition, etc. are scheduled from April to November 2009.
The exhibition also presents the video «Oil and Sugar», as well as a series of unpublished photographs of the city of Ghardaîa in the Algerian desert. These images echo an installation in semolina that reconstructs the plan of this city of the 11th century that influenced Le Corbusier in the development of the Charter of Athens, a text laying the foundations of progressive urbanism and modernist aesthetics.
Extract from the press release (2009)
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