French-Algerian artist Kader Attia presents his first solo museum project in Belgium at the Middelheim Museum. Through his installations, Attia shows observers how the meaning ascribed to objects and materials grows and coalesces throughout history, and how this reflects in cultural interaction, often in the context of colonial domination or conflict.
The exhibition Culture, Another Nature Repaired at the Middelheim Museum consists of two parts. In the Het Huis exhibition pavilion, Attia will present new sculptures created during the artist’s collaboration with traditional craftsmen in Bamako (Mali) and Brazzaville (Congo). They were inspired by a series of photographs of les gueules cassées (the broken faces): soldiers badly disfigured in the First World War, many of whom were drafted from the colonies.
Then outside, Attia will reinterpreti the monumental open-air work Al-Aqsa, an installation containing more than 350 cymbals, which debuted that year at Les Tuileries in Paris.