‘Urgency of Existence’, Kader Attia’s first solo exhibition in Southeast Asia, showcases a collection of the French-Algerian artist’s immersive installations in addition to current video and textile works. Because the present’s title suggests, Attia’s oeuvre prompts existential questions. Rooted within the artist’s dedication to restore with out erasure, his work is anxious with the private and collective traumas that our our bodies carry, the hassle to heal from (or study to dwell with) previous afflictions and the storytelling energy of mundane objects.
With its visceral, confrontational tone, On Silence (2021/24) elicits a way of unease. Suspended from the ceiling by wires, a tangled constellation of used prosthetic limbs varieties an odd labyrinth. Whereas there isn’t a clear indication of those discovered objects’ particular person provenance, Attia has urged that they belonged to survivors of warfare and territorial disputes, a few of them refugees. As I fastidiously navigate this corporeal hanging backyard, my ideas drift to the whereabouts of the prosthetics’ house owners: What catastrophes have they suffered? How did they cope? Casting their shadows on the partitions, the limbs – meant to revive steadiness and mobility to an injured physique – as a substitute provoke psychological turmoil. Perched between therapeutic and breaking, unity and fragmentation, these synthetic physique components invite us to come across and acknowledge the scars of imperial and colonial violence, together with programmatic efforts to debilitate populations.
From this prosthetic array, I enterprise towards Ghost (2007/24), a large-scale set up that conjures the atmosphere of a prayer corridor, however with eerie undertones. Save for a slim, linear path alongside which viewers can stroll, the ground is occupied by waves of enigmatic hooded figures, all sculpted from aluminium foil and crouched as if in deep meditation, emulating our bodies of ladies in prayer. As I stoop to their stage, I notice that they’re solely hole: the place their faces must be, gaping darkness stares again at me. What are they in search of? Religion-based belonging? Submersion into collective amnesia? Their soundlessness presents neither testimony nor revelation.
All through the exhibition, Attia explores the emotive energy of peculiar supplies and on a regular basis objects, which retailer and reveal reminiscences just like the physique that retains the rating. Hinging on an not easily seen piece of bags, La Valise Oubliée (The Forgotten Suitcase, 2024) interweaves particular person and collective histories that pertain to the Algerian Warfare (1954–62), a decolonial wrestle throughout which a whole lot of hundreds of individuals – the overwhelming majority of them Algerians – have been killed. This new video work sees the artist unpacking three suitcases whereas conversing with three people: French artist and Algerian sympathizer Jean-Jacques Lebel, feminist decolonial thinker Françoise Vergès and Attia’s mom. The paraphernalia faraway from the bags evokes intense, generally traumatic reminiscences – from a secret letter penned by an nameless member of the Algerian Nationwide Liberation Entrance (entrusted to Lebel) to a picture album belonging to the controversial lawyer Jacques Vergès (Françoise Vergès’s uncle), who defended Algerian militants in the course of the struggle, to images of the artist’s household members. When confronted with the sophisticated legacies of these we name kin or comrades, how can we strategy these tales as a method by which to mend connections and cultivate hope?
Attia’s want for collective reparation resonates with explicit efficiency in Untitled (Mirrors) (2024), a triptych of canvases that characteristic sutured incisions on their textile our bodies: seen scars. As an alternative of attempting to render these cuts much less noticeable, Attia’s stitchwork is deliberately coarse – an expression of religion within the act of brazenly embracing our wounds to forge websites of connection and regeneration.
Kader Attia, ‘Urgency of Existence’, is on view at Jim Thompson Artwork Heart, Bangkok till 16 March
Important picture: Kader Attia, Ghost, 2007/24, in ‘Urgency of Existence’, 2025, exhibition view. Courtesy: Jim Thompson Artwork Heart; {photograph}: Swita Uancharoenkul
