Berlinische Galerie

Kader Attia (*1970 in Dugny, France) has spent many years exploring the principle of ‘repair’, which he views as a constant in both nature and the history of humanity. At the Berlinische Galerie, Attia presents a conversation between two large installations: “J’Accuse” (2016) and “The Object‘s Interlacing” (2020).

“J’Accuse” (2016) consists of seventeen wooden busts, eight sculptures and an eleven-minute excerpt from an anti-war film of the same name by French director Abel Gance (1889–1981). The busts portray ‘gueules cassées’ (broken faces), First World War soldiers who had suffered severe facial disfigurement. Here Attia continues to explore his concept of
“repair”, which has been at the centre of his art for many years. In the video of “The Object‘s Interlacing”, Kader Attia
builds a dialogue with various experts about the dabte on the topic of restitution of cultural assets violently looted during the colonial era. Together they construct an understanding of restitution as a practice of repair with far broader implications than simply repatriating objects looted from their place of origin.

These two pieces by Attia are complemented by selected collages made by Hannah Höch for her iconic series “From an Ethnographic Museum” (1924- 1934); some of these works are from the Berlinische Galerie’s own collection. In them, Höch combines magazine reproductions of non-European artworks with images of parts of the bodies or faces of predominantly white women from the 1920s. She thus creates an aesthetic of fragmentation and repair, which inspired Kader Attia to integrate her works into his solo exhibition.

Kader Attia grew up in France and Algeria. He rose to international fame not least with his contributions to the Biennale di Venezia in 2003/2017 and dOCUMENTA (13) in 2012. In 2022 he curated the 12th Berlin Biennale.