ART CITIES:N.York- Kader Attia
Kader Attia was born in France and spent his childhood between France and Algeria. The more he grew up, the more he felt that being “in between” was at the root of his identities. Attia’s work explores the impact of Western cultural and political capitalism on the Middle East and North Africa, as well as how this residual strain of struggle and resistance to colonisation impacts Arab youth, particularly in the suburbs of France where Attia lived. While each new series employs different materials, symbols and scale, Attia’s practice continually returns to a sustained look at the poetic dimensions and complexities of contemporary life.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Lehmann Maupin Gallery Archive
The multimedia video installation “Reason’s Oxymorons” (2015), which premiered at the 13th Biennale de Lyon in 2015 is on presentation at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York. The installation is an expansive video library containing 18 interviews with philosophers, ethnologists, historians, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, musicologists, patients, healers, fetishists, and griots*. Its volumes are edited following different themes like: “Genocide”, “Totem and Fetish”, “Reason and Politics“ or “Trance“. Each indiviudally and also as a whole they make up an essay on the psychiatric pathology as it is perceived in traditional Non-Western cultures, on the one hand, and in modern Western societies, on the other. In its mix of rational explanations and irrational representations of what the West calls psychiatry, the work is particularly concerned with the question of the unrepairable, inherent in the idea of “repair”, and it calls into question the ambivalence of the psyche of modern Western societies towards traditional Non-Western societies. Attia’s library not only points to reason’s oxymorons but also to history’s oxymorons and the ambivalent nature of historical progress that can be regarded as a process of injury and repair leaving its traces in social psychopathology. “Reason’s Oxymorons” provides crucial insight into the effect of colonialism and the forcible merging of disparate cultures. It is particularly relevant when considering the current crisis of refugees who experience psychological trauma as they assimilate into European societies. The sterile, office-like environment of the installation alludes to the dehumanization that is the result of this type of assimilation and also effectively creates an atmosphere of claustrophobia and discomfort that comes with dealing with any type of trauma or mental health issue.
* Griot is an West African troubadour-historian. The griot profession is hereditary and has long been a part of West African culture. The griots’ role has traditionally been to preserve the genealogies, historical narratives, and oral traditions of their people, praise songs are also part of the griot’s repertoire.
Info: Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 201 Chrystie Street, New York, Duration: 13/1-4/3/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com
