French-Algerian artist Kader Attia explores the idea of repair through creativity in a new exhibition of his recent work at the museum of modern art in Montpellier, in the south of France. His work is inspired by his memories of Algeria and his travels around the Global South.
"Descent into Paradise" is Attia's first exhibition in over five years in France. He describes it as "a journey through my life story, the starting point of a dialogue, and a reflection on our times, a challenging path".
The title is a deconstruction of Dante’s Divine Comedy, from purgatory to hell, underneath which is hidden the ambivalent beauty of paradise, he adds.
Curated by Numa Hambursin, the show draws inspiration from the spatial organisation of the MoCo museum of modern art in Montpellier.
Visitors go from the top floor down to the basement as a metaphor for a voyage from the sky to the earth and its depths.
It's a reflection on repair, reparations and transcendence that "questions the notion of verticality as a vital and spiritual movement", according to the curator.
Algerian inspirations
"Algeria is definitely very important in my work, especially the traces of my family," Attia told RFI on the opening day of the exhibition, which is being shown in conjunction with "Being Mediterranean", a show of contemporary art from around the Mediterranean.
"My grandmother and my father fought against colonialism. But I also really care about the idea that we can have several identities."
Keen to share his identities with the world, Attia says his art is a way to honour the legacy of our ancestors.
"I grew up in a family in poverty in the east of Algeria, in the Aurès mountains – a landscape that has been significant in my life."
A multimedia artist, he uses drawing, photography, video, sculpture and installations.
The first works on display are a series of photographs of geometrical rocks from the Bab El Oued area of Algiers, where the artist would visit family.
In some photographs, young men look out towards the sea and towards Europe – except one, who sits reading a newspaper. He represents the people who decide to stay, perhaps to make a difference in their country, instead of dreaming of immigration.
Attia also explores Algeria through food with an installation that uses ingredients such as bread from where he grew up, and melted sugar cubes.
"They go with Algerian plates that have been broken – plates we used to prepare the bread, with special patterns in them, created with the peaks of forks," he explains.
Attia says this is a way of addressing his main theme, the desire for repair from past wounds, which irrigate the fractures of our present.
"I juxtapose eras and places in a back-and-forth movement," he explains. "I feel that spirituality enables us to escape the grip of history.
"Like the rain that ravages and transforms in two of the final pieces, it creates an ascension in a downward flow. This is how I see the 'Descent into Paradise'."
Travels back and forth
Born in 1970 in Seine-Saint-Denis, north of Paris, Attia grew up in his parents' native Algeria, and lived between the two countries for most of his youth.
He studied art in Paris at the prestigious École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs before travelling extensively in Algeria, Congo, Latin America and Asia, which informed his art deeply.
"We, as artists, can change by absorbing different cultures, dynamics, conversations," he says.
Attia is drawn to emotional responses to historical events, particularly those that involve exile and uprootedness, and he has a deep interest in the "repair" of trauma – especially colonial wounds.
The idea of repair is explicit in his sculptures invoking the gueules cassées ("broken faces") – soldiers who were disfigured during WWI.
Between poetry and politics
Attia, who was awarded the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2016, has forged a body of work that travels between the political and the poetic.
"The most important is to go back and forth between these two," he says.
"I'm addressing political questions sometimes, that is very clear. And I'm addressing them through the lens of a metaphysical and philosophical purpose."
Attia points to "Intifada: the Endless Rhizomes of Revolution", a 2016 installation of tree-like sculptures made of metal rebar. They form Ys to support slingshots, which were used by Palestinians against Israelis during the First Intifada of 1987 to 1993.
By intertwining the political with the poetic, Attia says he can "elaborate more subtle meanings, to echo the complexity of the society rather than very limited views and cliche".
"Descent into Paradise" is at Montpellier’s museum of modern art, Moco, until 22 September 2024.
