INTERVIEW WITH ABRAAJ CAPITAL ART PRIZE 2010 WINNING ARTIST, KADER ATTIA

By Laurie Ann Farrell

 

This interview in a fuller form was originally printed in the publication Kader Attia: Signs of Reappropriation which accompanied an exhibition of the same name at Savannah College of Arts & Design, where Laurie Ann Farrell is Executive Director of Exhibitions. The conversation sheds light on Attia’s creative inspirations and the theoretical nascence of his working method, and offers a broad look at his practice through a discussion of works included in this exhibition. Attia’s conceptual approach to art making is deeply rooted in a dialogue with modernist theory and contemporary conditions around the world. His sustained development of these concerns places him at the forefront of contemporary artists who successfully engage and bring together aesthetics, life, politics and religion.

Copyright the Savannah College of Art & Design, 2009

Born in 1970, Attia’s first solo exhibition was in 1996 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then he has exhibited regularly in France, in institutions such as Palais de Tokyo and Lyon Contemporary Art Museum. Attia has gained international recognition by participating in the Venice Biennale (2003), Art Basel Miami (2004) and the Lyon Biennale (2005). Attia’s most recent solo exhibitions have been at Galerie Christian Nagel, Berlin, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, Centre de Création Contemporaine, Tours, Boston ICA, US, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle, UK, le Magasin, Grenoble, France and Andréhn- Schiptjenko, Stockholm, Sweden.

Kader Attia was nominated for the Price Marcel Duchamp in 2005 and awarded the Prize of the Cairo Biennale in 2008. As an artist, he applies a duality of thought and hybridism to his artistic process, which he entirely puts down to his background, unafraid of tackling questions of immigration, globalisation and religion in a variety of disciplines. Installation and multi-media are often the final products of his process, characterised by exceptional attention to detail. The allegorical minimalism of his work is frequently unsettling owing to the discord between external sensory appeal and controversial content. Spending his childhood between Paris and Algeria has made Attia feel akin to both an Arab and Western way of thinking. He now lives and works between Algiers and Berlin.

Laurie Ann Farrell (LAF): Have you always known you would be an artist?

Kader Attia (KA): I don’t remember any dates or anything that made me feel I was an artist, but I have always been sensitive to all questions about ethics and aesthetics. Of course not when I was a child, but more so during my teenage years when I spent a great deal of time drawing and asking myself philosophical questions.

LAF: Please define your aesthetic.

KA: An endless questioning process in which doubts are always assumed to create independent forms. By independent forms, I mean architectural myths, which aim at always going beyond what is expected in any culture. Of course, it’s almost impossible to think about it a priori, and a posteriori; it is more obvious.

LAF: What artists inspire you?

KA: Pierre Henry, Philip Glass, Jean-Luc Godard and Tadeusz Kantor, Cildo Meireles. The list is long...

LAF: Do you consider yourself a French or Algerian (North African) artist? Is this an important distinction for you?

KA: Indeed the distinction is important for me. That’s why I consider myself both Algerian and French. I have grown up in both Algeria and France. I speak Arabic and French. I am writing you now from Algiers, where all my relatives live, except for my mother, brothers and sisters, who live in France. I always have had to go to Algeria to visit and spend time with my family. Therefore my roots are neither only European nor North African. I definitely feel both, but my mind is always in between.

LAF: Although many of your works have threads of social investigation, each installation is executed using different materials, and the end result is always completely new and fresh. Do your installations develop from an idea, or do you always start with a finished installation in mind and work back from that point?

KA: There are neither rules nor similar processes in my work. Every project is a new story. For two years, I have been seriously involved in projects that aimed at observing the current world through human activities, from war to architecture and art (destruction and construction).

LAF: Your focus on the power and influence of architecture in the Signs ofReappropriation exhibition — through the photographs taken on the constructed beach of Rochers Carrés — the Normal City film and the Untitled (Skyline) installation of shimmering refrigerators seem to blend aspects of architecture with art.

KA: I like design and architecture very much, but for me there is a significant difference between architecture, design and art. For me, architecture and design bring answers, whereas art is more about proposing questions. Art exists with and through questions. But it doesn’t mean that architecture and design are less interesting than art, or less powerful than art. Especially because architecture starts to ask questions — when time, memory and architecture mix together. I am definitely fascinated by architecture, but not the process in which architecture is conceived and built; this is to me an answer. A building is created for a purpose. It’s an answer in order to build. And you have to deal with many technical issues. But as soon as the building is done, and is going to live and stay maybe a thousand years, time is going to finish the architecture. And in the process of time, memory and architecture mix together, creating something definitely different that is close to art. And that’s why I am fascinated by fascist, communist or religious architecture.

Kader Attia, Signs of Reappropriation lecture, Trustees Theater,
Savannah, Georgia, 2009, photo by SCAD visual media department

It is not only through the symbol — it is because it is true history. I mean, when you think about a synagogue, when you think about these houses here in Sarcelles, when you think about a mosque, or a church, a cathedral or communist architecture, you see the architecture through some references. And these references are historical references. So that’s why I think there are some differences between art and architecture. Architecture exists through history, whereas art tries to exist before history. It’s my way to live art. Every artist can disagree, they can make art as they want. But my way to make art is influenced by the fact that I was exposed to Western postmodernist architecture early on, where the notion of “order” has been developed following the main desire of the father of modernist architecture, Le Corbusier, who used to say, “I’m making the link, the alliance between emotion and order”. Le Corbusier was fascinated by technique and aesthetic. But unfortunately, today, his successors have followed only the tough part: order. So, what I claim today is that it is possible to show how much art and architecture are very different. That is why in the video Normal City, I try to show how architecture could be art, even if it is through the ugliest post-modernist building.

It was five o’clock in the morning in the winter. I stopped my car just in front of big, suburban, ugly buildings, in which, even though it was five days before Christmas, there was only one flat displaying holiday lights. The lights created the impression that they were the heart of the building. I mean, this is for me the memory, the history of the architecture, which means that architecture can be seen as an art piece, an artwork in which we can also live. And I guess the most interesting architects today are thinking about this.

 


Website Design Agency - Webheads Interactive