This monograph gives a comprehensive overview of the variety and scope of the research carried out by Kader Attia over the past 15 years, using media as varied as installation, video, photography, and collage. Essays by Noémie Étienne (Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York), Kobena Mercer (Professor, Department of the History of Art, Yale University, New Haven), and an extensive interview with the artist by Monique Jeudy-Ballini and Brigitte Derlon (CNRS, Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale, Collège de France, Paris) offer new insights into Attia's practice.
Published on the occasion of Kader Attia's exhibition at the musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, from May to August 2015.
As a member of the North African community, Kader Attia (born 1970 in France) has spent the past several years examining the tangle of identity conflicts that contributed to the recent difficult events. His art is rooted in the complex relations between East and West, and it reflects the charged encounter between these markedly different worlds—an urprooted North African culture and a seductive Western consumer culture. Deeply embedded within this duality, his work reflects upon the sociopolitical powder cake that is threatening French society from within, and upon the millions of Muslims who have lost all hope of integrating into it.
