Kader Attia: The Museum of Emotion

An indispensible guide to an artist with an exceptional perspective on the way humans think about their place in the world.

One of the rising stars in the international art scene, Kader Attia is a French-Algerian multidisciplinary artist whose powerful yet complex images, objects and installations examine the way cultures and histories have been constructed. Attia often plays with the vocabulary of museums and architecture to trouble the boundaries between different worlds, particularly Western and non-Western, through his use of re-appropriated and repaired everyday objects and ephemera, such as African masks, stapled paving cracks, assemblages of prostheses and photographs of surgical reconstruction.

An extended interview with Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff explores the artist’s major themes, while art historians and other experts draw out particular threads to examine in depth. Compact but wide-ranging this is an indispensable first guide to an artist with an exceptional perspective on the way humans think about their place in the world.