Kader Attia

(Algerian/French, born 1970)

Kader Attia is a contemporary Algerian-French artist whose work draws from his experience living in two different cultures. As in his other works, Attia’s installation Ghost (2007), employs unconventional sculpture materials to symbolize how non-Western people create identities within European culture. “I try to trigger a political feeling in the viewer. My job is like all of us confronted with reality,” he has said. “What interests me is when a work poses a political question not only from a linguistic point of view, formal, but more from an ethical point of view.” Born on December 30, 1970 in Dugny, France, Attia spent his childhood living between the suburbs of Paris and in Algeria. He went on to study at the École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. In the years that followed, the artist began probing the complex themes of identity and cultural history for which he is now known. He currently lives and works between Berlin, Germany and Algiers, Algeria. Today, Attia’s works are held in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London, among others.