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Kader Attia’s artworks, addressing culturalism, colonialism and capitalism, speak volumes

- Kader Attia

Kader Attia’s breakthrough work, Ghost (2007), began as a cast of his mother. Childhood memories of seeing her in prayer prompted the artist to wrap her in layers of aluminium foil as she knelt. He then repeated the process until he had a crowd of 40 figures, arranged neatly in a grid. Viewers approach the figures from behind, mimicking the perspective from which Attia would have encountered the long, narrow spaces that often served as mosques in the Paris of his childhood. Only when they reach the other end of the installation do they realise that the figures’ burka-like hoods each conceal not a face, but rather a haunting void.