The Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts is hosting a major exhibition showcasing the work of French-Algerian artist Kader Attia. The event, curated in close collaboration with the artist himself, is his first solo exhibition in Switzerland.

The exhibition gives a comprehensive overview of the variety and scope of the research carried out by Kader Attia over the past 15 years through mediums as varied as installation, video, photography and collage. It highlights the fascinating ways in which Attia addresses the global entanglement of culture, politics, and identity in a unique and powerful way. His artistic research is heavily influenced by his own experience of growing up in France and Algeria and time spent as an adult in Venezuela and Congo. His work offers a poetic yet highly explicit reading of the relationships between Western thought and non-Western cultures, particularly through architecture, the human body, history, and culture.

Kader Attia’s work over a span of nearly a decade reveals a growing preoccupation with the issue of repair, understood in its twofold meaning of repairing an object or healing a wound and making recompense for the harm done. This explains the significance in his oeuvre of the object and the archive as tangible traces of history and of wounds that demand reparation. He turns the installation space not only into a memorial space, but also a place for rethinking the intrinsic bonds linking political, personal, and aesthetic (hi)stories that at first glance might appear to be unconnected. The Lausanne exhibition offers a rich panorama of Attia’s oeuvre, from his installations, videos, and slide shows to his canvases and collages.

If the artist’s reputation no longer needs to be made on the contemporary art circuit (he gained international recognition at the 50th Venice Biennale, the 8th Lyon Biennale and at dOCUMENTA (13), and has had major solo shows, among others, in Boston, Beirut, Berlin, Paris, London and New York), he has never before had a solo exhibition in Switzerland. The museum is thus delighted to be filling an important gap, and to pursue its series of solo shows with major contemporary artists (Tom Burr, Alfredo Jaar, Renée Green, Nalini Malani, Esther Shalev-Gerz, etc.) with Kader Attia.

PUBLICATION

Kader Attia

The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual monographic reference catalogue (French/English) edited by Nicole Schweizer, with essays by Noémie Etienne (Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York) and Kobena Mercer (Department of the History of Art, Yale University, New Haven), and an interview with the artist by Monique Jeudy-Ballini and Brigitte Derlon (CNRS, Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, Collège de France, Paris).

Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne & JRP l Ringier, Zurich 2015.

Order direct from the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts (postage and packing charges apply): info.beaux-arts@vd.ch

PROGRAMME

Public lecture by Kader Attia
Thursday, June 18, 6:30pm

Discover the full programme on the Museum website: www.mcba.ch.

Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts
Palais de Rumine
Place de la Riponne 6
CH – 1014 Lausanne

www.mcba.ch