Kader Attia

Kader Attia (b. 1970, Dugny, France) lives and works in Berlin and Paris. He has received degrees from Ecole supérieure d’arts appliqués Duperré, Paris (1993), Escola Massana, Centre d’Art i Disseny, Barcelona (1994), and Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, Paris (1998).

Raised in both Algeria and the suburbs of Paris, Attia draws from his experience of life across distinct cultures and contexts—including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Venezuela, and Barcelona—to examine the intricacies of social and cultural differences around the world. Attia’s work poetically engages colonialism’s consequences, foregrounding the material, historical, and spiritual notion of “repair” as a response to injury and collective trauma. As Attia has described: “Repair is an oxymoron, because ‘injury’ is its raison d’être. One cannot think about repairing something that hasn’t been injured. The state of the injured thing (the failure) and the state of the repaired thing (the repair) are forever bound in a causal layout that runs in the ethical and aesthetic loop of repair. This is true for all metaphors of repair: natural, cultural, political, immaterial, and so on.”

Attia deploys a variety of media and means, including photography, relics, discarded everyday objects, and other historical ephemera, to engage overtly political and emotionally charged subjects. His work materializes a genuine faith in the radical healing power of art to shape, change, and fix the world we inhabit.

Attia has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions such as Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2021); Kunsthaus Zürich (2020); Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo (2020);

Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2019); Hayward Gallery, London (2019); The Power Plant, Toronto (2018); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK), Ghent (2017); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2016); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt (2016); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013); Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris (2012); and Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2007).

His work has recently been featured in group exhibitions such as the Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah Art Foundation (2023); YOYI! Care, Repair, Heal, Gropius Bau, Berlin (2022–2023); The Roaring Twenties, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2021); Smoke and Mirrors. The Roaring Twenties, Kunsthaus Zürich (2020); Down to Earth, Gropius Bau, Berlin (2020); Global(e) Resistance, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2020–2021).

Attia has received several prestigious awards including a Joan Miró Prize (2017), a Yanghyun Prize (2017), and a Prix Marcel Duchamp (2016).

His work is included in numerous public and private collections including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Fonds national d’art contemporain, Paris; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha; Margulies Collection, Miami; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Sharjah Art Foundation; Société Générale, Paris; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London; and Vanmoerkerke Collection, Belgium, among others.