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Kader Attia Calls on Paris in Latest Exposition

Kader Attia Calls on Paris in Latest Exposition

28 February 2019 | PAR Megan Winters

A scholar, a nurse, and an American walk into a bar. They engage in diverse intellectual discussions, debate the effects of postcolonialism, and leave with a broader cultural perspective. Welcome to La Colonie, a bar and cultural center renovated by French-Algerian artist Kader Attia.

La Colonie has welcomed all walks of life and trains of thought since its opening in 2016. The space reflects the goals of Attia, who grew up in Algeria and Paris and has spent years studying cultural perspectives in the Congo and South America. He has witnessed the ever-present grip of colonialism on each of these countries and has focused his work on their diverse understandings of history, noting each thread of deprivation and suppression.

However, there is nothing suppressing about La Colonie, the cultural center that sustains itself financially by becoming a bar on the weekends. Free discussion and open forum have been the foundation for the club’s success, earning Attia the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2016. People come to dance and party, debate and argue, and meet new people over couscous and a glass of red wine.

 

Artist Kader Attia

 

Still, it takes more than an effective club to be awarded the most prestigious art award in France. Attia’s current exhibition, “The Museum of Emotion,” is on display at the Hayward Gallery in London, featuring human artifacts in the same display as large stuffed animals. This calls on the conversation of how African artifacts are treated in western museums. Artifacts believed to have contained magic, that carry a heavy history of rituals and blessings, are often decontextualized and viewed by westerners with the goggling eyes of colonialism. On its own, a mask or a statue becomes a spectacle rather than a meaningful instrument of education.

La Colonie and Attia’s works are changing that, one conversation at a time. He is an artist of paintings, of photographs, of sculptures, and of discussions. One of the most current conversations the exhibition at the Hayward Gallery has started is about France, most notably the Musee du quai Branly in Paris. In November 2018, President Emmanuel Macron announced that 26 artifacts forcibly taken from the Kingdom of Benin–most of them in the current custody of the Musee du quai Branly–would be returned. Macron additionally called for an international conference on the return of similar artifacts to be held during the first quarter of 2019.

While this has created controversy, it has begun the necessary conversation of the intentions of western museums and the changing ideas in the postcolonial era.

Pieces from Kader’s Exposition at the Hayward Gallery

Having grown up in Paris and Algeria, Attia was a child of the oppressor and the oppressed. Born only eight years after Algeria’s liberation from France, the effects of colonialism in Algeria were still fresh throughout his childhood. His education in Paris and Barcelona coupled with his time of service in the Congo and research in South America sprouted the idea for a necessary cultural center, one where controversy could be constructive.

La Colonie was the result. Situated near Gare du Nord in the tenth arrondisement, the art is found in the building itself, the exhibitions, and created through discussions by anyone who walks through the doors.  

Visuels :CC

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