One of the rising stars in the international art scene, Kader Attia (b.
1970) is a French-Algerian multidisciplinary artist whose powerful yet
complex images, objects and installations examine the way cultures and
histories have been constructed. Attia often plays with the vocabulary
of museums and architecture to trouble the boundaries between different
worlds, particularly Western and non-Western, through his use of
re-appropriated and repaired everyday objects and ephemera, such as
African masks, stapled paving cracks, assemblages of prostheses and
photographs of surgical reconstruction. An in-depth interview with
Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff explores the artist's major
themes, while art historians and other experts draw out particular
threads to examine in depth. Compact but wide-ranging, this is a
publication to be held in the hand - an indispensable first guide to an
artist with an exceptional perspective on the way humans think about
their place in the world.