Description:

Join us for the opening of a newly commissioned installation by internationally renowned artist Kader Attia, informed by his research in the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies and interviews with Northwestern faculty across disciplines. Conceived as an installation, the exhibition will feature collage, a sculpture, and an extended film-essay. Taken as a whole, the works will expand on Attia’s long-term exploration of trauma and repair, both of the body and of society, and will probe the legacies of colonialism, slavery, and xenophobia in our time.

During this opening conversation Block curators Kathleen Bickford Berzock and Janet Dees will give context to the project, followed by a conversation between Kader Attia and Caroline Bledsoe and Peter Locke, Northwestern University faculty members in Anthropology and Global Health Studies. The conversation will be moderated by Antawan I. Byrd, Art History, Ph.D. candidate.

Exhibition supported by the Myers Foundations, the Diane and Craig Solomon Contemporary Art Fund, the Alsdorf Gallery at the Block Museum Endowment Fund and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities.

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REFLECTING MEMORY SCREENINGS
In conjunction with the 2PM opening program with Kader Attia, we are proud to present two special screenings in the Block's auditorium featuring his extended film essay:

Reflecting Memory
(2016, 48 min, HD video)

Block Museum, Pick-Laudati Auditorium
Saturday January 21st
12:30 PM and 3:30PM [directly following the artist conversation]

Reflecting Memory will also be screened on a continuous loop in the gallery throughout the duration of the exhibition.

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Conceived as an installation, the exhibition Kader Attia: Reflecting Memory will feature collage, a sculpture, and an extended film-essay. Taken as a whole, the works will expand on Attia’s long-term exploration of trauma and repair, both of the body and of society, and will probe the legacies of colonialism, slavery, and xenophobia in our time.

Kader Attia grew up moving between Algeria and the suburbs of Paris, and uses this experience of living as a part of two cultures as a starting point to develop a dynamic practice that confronts cultural differences. His debut solo exhibition was held in 1996 in the Republic of Congo, and since then his artistic career has gained major international recognition, with inclusion in exhibitions such as the 50th Venice Biennale (2003), dOCUMENTA13 (2012), the 8th Lyon Biennial (2015), the 5th Marrakech Biennial (2016), and Dak'Art 2016. Attia has recently exhibited in major shows at the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Modern, and the Guggenheim Museum. In 2016 he was awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize, among France’s most prestigious arts award, and his solo exhibition Sacrifice and Harmony, at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, was named German exhibition of the year by the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).