Kader Attia / MATRIX 274

September 18–November 17, 2019

Part of French-Algerian artist Kader Attia’s ongoing investigation of the concept of repair and healing from the trauma of war, this exhibition presents his seminal installation J’accuse.

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Kader Attia: J’accuse, 2016; installation of wooden busts on metal plinths, wooden sculptures on metal supports, and single-channel HD video projection; installation view, The Power Plant, Toronto, 2018; courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nagel Draxler. Photo: Tony Hafkenscheid.

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Friday, September 20, 9 AM–6 PM
Tarrying with the Irreparable: A Workshop in Conversation with Kader Attia’s Arts of Repair

This all-day academic workshop engages with key themes in Kader Attia’s work, reflecting on trauma and loss, war and colonization, the idea of repair, and art as an engagement with the irreparable.

Geballe Room, Townsend Center for the Humanities, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley

Free off-site event presented at the Townsend Center for the Humanities
Wednesday, September 18, 6 PM
Artist’s Talk: Kader Attia in Conversation with Stefania Pandolfo

MATRIX artist Kader Attia is joined in conversation by Stefania Pandolfo, a professor of anthropology at UC Berkeley.

BAMPFA

Past Films

Kader Attia / MATRIX 274

September 18–November 17, 2019

For over a decade, the French-Algerian artist Kader Attia has been deeply invested in researching and documenting the concept of repair as it relates to healing from the trauma of war. This interest stems from his abiding study of postcolonial histories, and from thinking through possible futures for formerly colonized societies. In effect, Attia’s work asks, How do individuals and social bodies enact a process of healing after having suffered both physically and psychologically during major political conflicts? In particular, he distinguishes wounds that are visible from those that are invisible, stating, “The essential aspect in any traditional and modern repair is inherent to two conditions: the apprehension of its reality and its virtuality. In order to read and understand each repair you have to take the visible and invisible reality of each thing into consideration.” Attia’s material and philosophical investigations on this...

MATRIX 274, Attia’s first solo exhibition in California, presents his seminal work J’accuse (2016). The installation features seventeen busts carved out of teak wood that Attia produced, assisted by Senegalese craftsmen, utilizing images of disfigured World War I veterans who suffered severe facial injuries and subsequently underwent plastic surgery. The sculptures are situated before a clip of French director Abel Gance’s 1938 antiwar film J’accuse, in which actual wounded veterans of the Battle of Verdun, known in French as les gueules cassées (“broken faces”), play themselves. Resurrected from the dead, they march through the streets to warn the world of the atrocities of war. The title of the installation references both Gance’s film and Émile Zola’s “J’accuse!” from 1898, an open letter to the president of France in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer falsely imprisoned for espionage as a result of an antisemitic conspiracy within the French army.

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Kader Attia / MATRIX 274 is organized by Apsara DiQuinzio, senior curator of modern and contemporary art and Phyllis C. Wattis MATRIX Curator, and Stefania Pandolfo, professor of medical anthropology and sociocultural anthropology at UC Berkeley. The MATRIX Program is made possible by a generous endowment gift from Phyllis C. Wattis and the continued support of the BAMPFA Trustees.

Kader Attia / MATRIX 274

September 18–November 17, 2019

Past Events

Tarrying with the Irreparable: A Workshop in Conversation with Kader Attia’s Arts of Repair

Artist’s Talk: Kader Attia in Conversation with Stefania Pandolfo

Past Films