Kader Attia was born in 1970 to Algerian parents in a suburb north of Paris. Now working in Berlin and Paris, he draws on the experience of living in two cultures as the basis for his artistic practice.

In a new video installation created for the Kunsthaus Zürich, Attia addresses the much-debated topical issue of ‘restitution’ of non-Western, especially African artefacts. The work is an attempt to delve deeper into this complex subject. It includes the voices of historians, philosophers, activists, psychoanalysts and economists. Kader Attia gathers the varying standpoints together, without apportioning blame, in order to achieve a nuanced analysis of the topic. The history of Switzerland and its collections flows into this multi-layered film, throwing up some fascinating new insights.

For several decades, Kader Attia has been investigating the concept of ‘repair’. ‘Repairing’ something means restoring it to its former state; but for Attia, the word also extends to reparation – making amends for a previous wrong. He plays with this double meaning, investigating the various concepts that lie behind the term in both the Western and non-Western world. Attia presented a striking work on the subject at documenta (13) in Kassel (2012), where his large-scale installation ‘The Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures’ filled an entire hall. Among other elements, it comprised wooden busts of people with disfigured, ‘broken’ faces. These ‘Gueules cassées’ were soldiers who survived the First World War but were scarred for life by the terrible wounds they suffered.