Hayward Gallery - Kader Attia
As part of the Hayward Gallery, the second exhibition in which we had to take a look at was the ‘The Museum of Emotion’ by Kader Attia in which exhibits two decades of his work and shows sculptures, collages, videos, installations and photographs. Attia was born in the 1970s in France where he first became connected with physical, geographical and intellectual spaces around various areas and then further on in his life, he started to create various projects using photography. When his career kick started, he developed his work by using media rather than photography and expanded to the sculptures, installations etc that he uses today in which helped to make his inspiring installation called ‘The Repair from Occident to Extra-Occidental Cultures’. This installation was exhibited within the exhibition in which I found very interesting as you were able to walk in and out of the space seeing every angle of each installation that was put within the artwork.
Attia’s exhibition takes place over six different rooms where each room shows every aspect of art that he has developed overtime and focuses on themes within society such as Western societies, sex workers throughout Paris and then leading onto looking into metal health in which can link to the audience in many ways. Being able to look into various subjects that have an impact on the world in so many different ways is inspiring as you get to experience more than one emotion that allows you to connect to a certain piece such as ‘Reflecting Memory’ in which is a documentary set of interview videos that show a range of people exploring how medical relates to social and the body. When walking around each room, I became automatically drawn with various pieces due to how real life has really played a part with his work and how Attia has been able to get to know all of his models/each subject before creating a project that tells a story from the beginning to the very last detail of the story. In room 2, there were various photographic portraits and installations based on a group of transgender sex working who live and work in Paris in which shows the struggles they face daily such as physical violence which touched me because you don’t realise how much a job affects someone but the room also shows how their job is part of them and they enjoy it. Within the HENI project space, the Reflecting Memory exhibit in which shows how a culture goes through trauma through social situations as well as showing how different people handle everything in their own way such as one video where it shows a woman throwing money in the air so that it lands in people’s hands which was rather interesting as it made me wonder why people act like they are happy when deep down they aren’t.
To me, Kader Attia’s exhibition work was more interesting than Diane Arbus’ because not only was there more to look at visually and listen to, but the stories being shown to the audience seemed to run throughout every room and to see the change in the exhibition display when walking around really drew me into Kader Attia's work as nothing ended up being the same. I don't think I would be majorly inspired to use his installation work as part of my own projects, but since I went to the exhibition I have realised that I could look more into his photography work and see how I could use his style of work in my own work.
