Show Opening: Kader Attia, The Field of Emotion
This exhibit opens June 08, 2018 at the Contemporary Arts Center:
The Exhibition is a production of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto in partnership with the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati
Over the last few years the notion of “repair” as both a physical and symbolic act has been at the core of Algerian-French artist Kader Attia’s (b. 1970 Seine-Saint-Denis, France) practice. His work is often driven by exchanges with sympathetic thinkers in fields as far-ranging as medicine, music, psychoanalysis, natural science, political science and architecture.
His past works include J’Accuse (2016), an installation of 18 carved wooden busts mirroring the mutilated faces of World War I veterans that are arranged before a projection of the eponymous 1919 anti-war film by Abel Gance. The capacity for such images to serve in the production of fear – particularly in a security-obsessed world order – lies at the heart of Attia’s inquiry.
For this exhibition he will develop a new context-specific work around the notion of repair as it is manifest in a particularly Canadian/North American history. The exhibition is curated by Carolin Köchling, Curator of Exhibitions at The Power Plant, and assisted by Nabila Abdel Nabi, RBC Curatorial Fellow at The Power Plant.
Kader Attia: The Field of Emotion is provided by Etant Donnés Contemporary Art, a program of FACE Foundation, developed in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, with lead funding from the Florence Gould Foundation, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, the French Ministry of Culture and Institut Français-Paris.