Kader Attia: REPAIR. 5 ACTS
His first institutional solo show in Germany, KW Berlin, 26 May - 25 Aug. 2013. The artist interviewed by the curator; photo tour.
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Wooden masks, mirror, steel
(Detail)
Art history widely accepts the influence of African art on western modernism. Still, traditional cult objects, like masks or totems, are rarely displayed on equal terms among artworks of the western canon in museums of contemporary art. More commonly, African artworks are exhibited separately in ethnological museums, where our ambivalent relationship with them – between alienation and fascination – is often highlighted by theatrical staging. Picking up on the emotional overtones of this mode of presentation, Kader Attia transforms the historical artifacts into artworks with the same degree of ambivalence, confronting the viewer with his or her own fragmented face, overlaid upon the other, alien one, in each piece’s mirror shards.
© Photo: Haupt & Binder
His first institutional solo show in Germany, KW Berlin, 26 May - 25 Aug. 2013. The artist interviewed by the curator; photo tour.