Kader Attia

https://www.ft.com/content/a99cae2a-429d-11e6-9b66-0712b3873ae1

“I was fascinated by how in traditional societies, not only Africa, but also Japan and the west before modernity, when a broken object was repaired, the repair process always kept the trace of the injury,” he explains when we meet in a cluttered, book-filled corner of his studio in Berlin, the city he has lived in since 2010. But while traditional societies repair objects to give them a new life, often incorporating elements of European culture in the process — he shows me a Berber necklace dotted with French francs — the western approach is to discard objects that are damaged, valuing only originals in pristine condition. For Attia, repair has become a metaphor for cultural reappropriation, and resistance.