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| Kader Attia |
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For L.F.D.A. 02.Kader Attia’s work for La Force de l’Art 02 continues his exploration of the “myths and poetry of emptiness”. For Attia, emptiness is a paradoxical symbol of our society, governed as it is by hype and overkill, excess, pollution, overpopulation… Despite our opulent surroundings (in the West at least), the failure of our systems, and the absence of fixed, reliable socio-political bearings leave citizens of the modern world incapable of facing the future with serene assurance, feeling instead as if they are forever teetering on the brink of a vast, existential void. Emptiness is the expression of a sense of historical and political dislocation. Looked at another way, emptiness is also an aesthetic element in its own right, imbued with poetry. As Lao Tse puts it, “man creates things, but the void gives them meaning”, a phrase which Kader Attia cites as a major source of inspiration in his thinking on art. The void shapes reality, discreetly and delicately, opening a poetic space at the heart of everyday existence. Empty plastic bags describe forms that cannot hold their shape for long. The fragility of these sculptures presupposes an ephemeral existence defined by, and contributing to, our sense of space and time. This subordination to external forces locates the sculptures’ existence in a temporal rift which, from a metaphorical point of view, is also a temporal void. The forms of the plastic bags are in fact those of the objects they once contained : as such, they reflect both concepts of the nature of emptiness. These plastic bags are also inspired by a real political and social phenomenon: the lives of the homeless, searching for food every evening on the streets in winter, armed with their plastic bags. Kader Attia’s plastic bags represent the limits of Art’s political commitment in the face of uncompromising Reality. Kader AttiaInspired by current events or his own life experiences, Kader Attia’s installations deal with the difficulty of reconciling different cultures. Consisting of war and objects that he diverts from their usual functions to multiply the readings that may be made of them, his installations are often marked by a dull and contained violence bearing witness to the artist’s critical view as he denounces the world around him. Intermingling symbols and references, Kader Attia produces a work rich in multiple meanings, the eloquence of which never fails to draw us in. [M. A.] Kader Attia was born in Dugny in 1970.
 Kader Attia |
