Kader Attia

The artworks The Body’s Legacies, Part 1: The Objects and The Body’s Legacies, Part 2: The Postcolonial Body by Kader Attia were part of the exhibition Tell me about ~~yesterday~~ tomorrow (Nov. 28, 2019 until Oct. 18, 2020).

Born to Algerian parents in a suburb of Paris, Kader Attia (born in Dugny in 1970) uses his experience of living between two cultures as the starting point for his art. Recurring themes in his work include the legacy of colonialism and its influence on cultural identities, collective trauma in postcolonial societies, and paths toward healing. Attia views “repair” as a constant feature of human nature that can be a way of reclaiming destroyed or forgotten values, whether at the cultural, personal, or spiritual level.

The Body’s Legacies, Part 1: The Objects, 2018

Video, 58:20 min

The Body’s Legacies is a reflection in film on the historical, psychological, and political impacts of European colonialism. In his two-part film essay, Kader Attia collects interviews in which international experts from the fields of history, ethnography, cultural studies, art history, and more discuss various aspects of postcolonial life.

The first part of the film, The Objects, deals with the topic of cultural appropriation under the conditions of colonialism and the associated questions about the return of cultural assets. It focuses on a critical discussion of a large number of objects taken from people by European occupiers and missionaries, who brought them to their home countries. Removed from their functions and social uses, these objects still appear in European and North American collections today, where they are presented from a purely Western perspective. Within the film, this raises complex questions regarding the authority and legitimacy of the institutions that engage in these practices.

The Body’s Legacies, Part 2: The Postcolonial Body, 2018

Video, 48 min

Part two of the film, The Postcolonial Body, focuses on the suppression of “postcolonial bodies” in the context of current refugee flows. It opens with the story of Théo Luhaka, a French citizen of African descent who was severely injured by policemen in a suburb of Paris in February 2017, an incident that received a great deal of media attention in France. Through interviews with four protagonists, all of them the descendants of colonized or enslaved people, Attia examines how the history of colonial violence and internalized racism influence the way the body is perceived and concretely impact how people act in public spaces.