The Field of Emotion presents Attia’s installation J’accuse (I accuse) (2016). Inspired by the injury and disfigurement of millions of soldiers in World War I, Attia created an installation of eighteen wooden busts, arranged before a projection of the eponymous antiwar film by French film director Abel Gance. Originally made in 1919, the film was reshot as a warning against the looming threat of war in 1938 and featured footage of these veterans. The artist used portraits from the archives of the Historisches Museum Frankfurt, the Musée du Service de Santé des Armées in Paris and the Wellcome Collection in London as a visual reference for the carving of the busts. The work suggests that further damage was perpetrated by the ostracizing reactions of a society that viewed these faces as “monstrous”.

The Field of Emotion is Kader Attia’s first solo exhibition in Canada. After its presentation in Toronto, it will tour to the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati (8 June – 9 September, 2018).

Kader Attia (born 1970 in Dugny, France) lives and works in Berlin and Paris. Solo exhibitions of Attia’s work have been organized at SMAK, Ghent (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, Australia (2017); Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2016); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2013); Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2012); The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2007); and Musée d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, France (2006). His work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions around the world at venues including the Leopold Museum, Vienna (2016); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016); MoMA, New York (2012); and multiple biennials, including the Venice Biennale (2017 and 2003); Sharjah Biennial (2017); Marrakech Biennial (2016 and 2014); dOCUMENTA, Kassel, Germany (2012); and Lyon Biennial (2005). In 2016 Kader Attia was awarded with the Marcel Duchamp Prize and the prize for the best exhibition of the year from the Deutsche Internationale Vereinigung der Kunstkritiker (AICA), and recently the Joan Miró Prize (2017).

For more information : The Power Plant Gallery