{"id":9955,"date":"2022-09-15T11:27:57","date_gmt":"2022-09-15T09:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=9955"},"modified":"2022-12-25T11:22:16","modified_gmt":"2022-12-25T09:22:16","slug":"kader-attia-berlin-biennales-curator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/kader-attia-berlin-biennales-curator\/","title":{"rendered":"Kader Attia, Berlin Biennale’s Curator"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kader Attia in the video “Reflecting Memory<\/a>,” directed by Matteo Frittelli (courtesy Matteo Frittelli).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The prolific French-Algerian multimedia artist Kader Attia, whose work focuses on colonial and post-colonial history, trauma, and the spaces of repair, had his biggest event in Berlin with the Berlin Biennale.<\/p>\n

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Melissa Chemam<\/h4>\n

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In 2021, when he was chosen to be the curator of the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art<\/a> (June 11 to September 18, 2022), Kader Attia titled the edition \u201cStill Present!\u201d Early on, he expressed a desire to explore \u201chow colonialism and imperialism continue to operate in the present\u201d and to \u201cdecolonize the art world and museums.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a sort of principle of invisibility in Berlin,\u201d Attia told me recently over Zoom, \u201clinked to the reunification of the two Germanies, with the violence of the capitalist hegemony, which has resulted in a forced disappearance of the East\u2019s identity, as well as the oblivion over Germany\u2019s colonial enterprise.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Attia wanted to invite German artists to the Biennale as much as artists from the diverse diaspora to be found in Berlin and beyond \u2014 the Vietnamese community, for instance, which he insisted was often forgotten. This community grew with the arrival of so-called \u201cboat people,\u201d refugees from the Vietnam war, Attia reminds us. But he also reached out to other exiles, from Asia, Latin America and of course the Arab world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been living in the city for about a decade,\u201d he said. \u201cI live in a \u2018white\u2019 area of East Berlin, where the aesthetic of the DDR [the Democratic Republic of East Germany, as abbreviated in German] is still present. Here is the former headquarters of the STASI [the former East German State Security Service, or state police], as well as diverse communities from the former socialist bloc, from Asia to Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Berlin has long been known for its vibrant Turkish community, as Germany and Turkey have built strong ties since World War I, which included opening routes for Turkish migration to Germany. But over the past ten years, with the Arab Spring and the war in Syria, Middle Eastern culture has become more represented across the city by Arabs than Turks. Some even speak of a special movement in Berlin of Arab artists in exile\u00a0<\/i>(see \u201cArabs in Exile<\/a>: How Berlin became a new cultural hub\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I go shopping, my nostalgia for Arab products is easy to satisfy,\u201d Attia admits, \u201cas there are very strong Arab communities in the city. There are many Syrians around here; most of them arrived from 2011 and the start of the civil war in their homeland. There are also many Lebanese and Palestinians who have called the city home for decades.\u201d Attia, who is French and\u00a0\u00a0Algerian, welcomes them all. \u201cTo me, they all brought a diversity that was missing in the city,\u201d he said. \u201cBerlin became less closed up, and they contributed to decreasing the \u2018white\u2019 gentrification of East Berlin.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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