Attia was born in 1970 in Dugny, France, and lives in Berlin and Paris. He grew up between the French capital and Bab el Oued, a suburb of Algiers in Algeria, and his Algerian-French identity and the culture and history of Europe and North Africa—the global north and south—have profoundly informed his subject matter and materials. His work across three decades in photography, collage, sculpture, installation and sound, is concerned with a central concept: repair. By association, the notion of repair is inevitably connected with violence and injury.
Kader Attia: Shattering and Gathering our Traces, New York, October 30 – December 13, 2025
© Kader Attia. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London. Photo by Studio Kukla
Within this overarching theme, he explores political and social issues in the present and the complex legacies of colonialism. While directly addressing particular historical and current moments, his work is rich in metaphor, and he considers this poetic aspect crucial to art’s ability to effect social change. Attia regards his output as the evidence of an ongoing process of research, but despite its fundamentally philosophical and textual genesis, it is often dramatic visually and experientially.
Kader Attia, Untitled
© Kader Attia. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London. Photo by Studio Kukla
He reflects on what he calls the “menemonic traces” and ghosts present through his work, explains why he feels the gaze is a bodily phenomenon beyond the ocular, and discusses the importance of his trips while a young person in Congo and Mexico. He talks about his early interest in Michelangelo’s drawings, his engagement with writers from the psychoanalyst Karima Lazali to the poets Édouard Glissant and Aimé Césaire, and the cathartic power of music. Plus he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?
- Kader Attia: Shattering and Gathering our Traces, Lehmann Maupin, New York, until 20 December; Kader Attia. The Lost Paradise, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain, until 18 January 2026; Kader Attia: A Descent into Paradise, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico, until 4 January 2026.
- Bienal de Sao Paulo: Not All Travellers Walk Roads—Of Humanity as Practice, until 11 January 2026; The World Tree: 24th Paiz Art Biennial, Guatemala City and Antigua Guatemala, until 15 February 2026.
This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, the arts and culture platform. Bloomberg Connects offers access to a vast range of international cultural organisations through a single click, with new guides being added regularly. They include a number of museums across the world that have had major presentations of Kader Attia’s work, from the Hayward Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery in London to the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Bienal Sāo Paulo, in whose 36th edition Attia features. In the guide to the Bienal, you can find a comprehensive audio guide to the show, with floor-by-floor information on the presentation at the celebrated building that hosts the exhibition, the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion. Inspired by the sonic theme of the exhibition, artists who work with the voice—the singers, slammers, poets, and musical actors Xênia França, Rico Dalasam, Mel Duarte, and Dandara Queiroz—discuss 20 works in the show.
