Flying Rats, Kader Attia, 2005

I reviewed Kader Attia's exhibit at the Henry on March 7, here.

Ten days later, he emailed me a thoughtful response.

Artists seldom respond to critics, especially a point by engagement of themes considered.

I think he's right about rats. Even though I acknowledged that I hadn't seen his installation, only the photos, I was unwise to speculate about the installation's effects.

Here's Attia, in full:

Dear Regina Hackett:

I hope this email finds you well.
I have read your article about my show art Henry Art Gallery with attention and have found it really interesting.
The description you do of the "plastic bags" work is moving and I am glad you have experienced it this way. I think that you have well felt and described the poetry that I intend to give in my work.
As far as I am concerned, I think that an art work is more an experience than an object. The shape is only necessary as a reference to its "history", its historical content, as Michel Foucault would say.

I am then surprised you write about a work like "Flying Rats", only from rumors and pictures, without having experienced it. Like a lot of art works, this one has to be "lived", you have to be physically involved. You have to feel the living presence of the birds, hear the sound of their wings, hear them coo, smell their smell…
As a result, some people were scared because of pigeons' phobias, some were fascinated by the birds' peaceful presence, and some were struck by the pathetic presence of the children. That's why I think that "pictures are not more effective than the installation itself". Beside this, if you had seen it yourself, you would have noticed that the children were real sculptures made out of bird seed, I have handmade, and not "people-shaped sacks".

In an ephemeral work like "Flying Rats", which disappears as pigeons eat the sculptures, in a work like "Ghost", experience is more important than its final shape.

I am very flattered about the Abakanowicz reference, as I really like her work. Nevertheless, I think the similarity between the "Ghost" and Abakanowicz sculptures is not as obvious as it seems to be. Art is not working with WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) rules. It would then mean that the "Embryology" series of 2002-2003 would be compared to a Franz West sculpture without colors. First of all, Abakanowicz's shapes, from their size, rough aspect, do not intend to be really human, whereas I care a lot about casting my sculptures directly on women bodies, to get their trace.

Beside this, as you mention, Abakanowicz's sculptures are "peasant-hardy masses", whereas the "Ghost" sculptures' fragility and ephemeral nature are entirely part of the work and especially of its meaning. Here is then another difference between her and my work. She indeed uses bronze and then fits her discourses in duration, eternity, when I have conceived "Ghost" like an ephemeral work.

Meaning and shape shall not be separated, and vision of a work can not be based on formal comparisons. Therefore, in this installation, the political referent of emptiness (its "history or archive ", as Michel Foucault says) coexists with its poetic form.
This notion of emptiness exists in a spatio-temporal way: through the space contained in each sculpture, as well as the space in which these sculptures exist. Moreover, the temporal notion of emptiness is related to the medium's fragility. I use this material – aluminum foil - to create a rupture in physical time. This spatio-temporal fault is a metaphor of another emptiness, a temporal void.

Ghost is a synthesis of my reflections on the boundary between socio political art and the reality of everyday life.

Another difference is that Abakanowicz works on memory, whereas I use the emptiness contained in each sculpture as a political reference to contemporary history, as an ephemeral, then temporal, notion. In Abakanowicz's works big traumas in Human Being's past History are really important, whereas I question the current post-ideologies world and its future - its political void, loss of identity through political and economical globalization, of faith in the future, hope's and life's fragility - through ephemerality. "We have killed the future" Edgar Morin as said. Then, whereas Abakanowicz questions memory, I attend to answer to the current time of ephemerality, of instantaneity, we are living.

Beside this, using bronze for the "Backs" series, a strong material, Abakanowicz creates a sculpture that will last in time, and then a frozen representation, whereas I use a poor material, for an ephemeral work. The memory contained in the "Ghost" sculptures is the memory of an instant: the casting of a body made at one moment and then destroyed. Being into an instant and using aluminum foil (like the one everyone uses in his kitchen, which is not a common museum material), I question the viewer about himself as part of the world he lives in at the moment when the work is created.

The only point Abakanowicz and I join is poetry. As I have told you, and as you say about the plastic bags, I use emptiness as both a political and a poetic referent. Abakanowicz also make a deep and beautiful poetic work.

The comparison of the "Rochers Carres" installation with the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, which I respect very much, even if I have never seen it for real, is also in the end, not so obvious. Here again, materials, shapes and meaning are interdependent. This work evokes the building of "Banlieues" worldwide (in France, but also in Russia, China…). This installation attempts to psychologically recreate the claustrophobic architecture of the Paris banlieues I grew up in. Like the "Ghost" installation, it also tells about the loss of identity and emptiness in populations of people that are treated as "paria", unworthy of consideration of the mainstream population. It is meant to be experienced: you have to feel the claustrophobia this architecture – thought and designed on purpose - provokes on people living here. You have to feel the captivity the inhabitants feel in these open sky jails.

The similarity between the Parisian banlieues and the beach in Algiers is that they are built like boundaries. The way architecture - a man made environment - has effects on people's everyday lives is one of the core ideas of my researches. As you mention, the "Rochers Carres" beach in Algiers is a man made boundary that separate young Algerian people from a dreamed better life in Europe. It is a way to imprison them in their cruel reality, like it is the case in the banlieues, where they end up as immigrants. These shapes contain the emptiness these people have to move in. Playing in the 7 meters high blocks of the beach is as dangerous as walking through the banlieues' buildings, in the middle of which you can be seen and identified from far away. In both cases, you do it at your own risk.

I work on these issues as they are part of my history. They have built my aesthetic references and my way of thinking. I then intend to evoke them through concrete entities, but also through the emptiness they are included into.

Beside this, in the Berlin monument, the parallelepiped shapes are very straight and evoke graves stones of hundreds of thousand people murdered during the Holocaust, while I use falling blocks as the symbol of a decadent world. Once again, one evokes memory as I am into current issues. The falling blocks evoke big cities' fragility. Man builds bigger and bigger buildings, dreaming of being invulnerable. The blocks express this will, but they are not made out of concrete: they are made out of sheetrock and will be destroyed at the end of the show. They remind viewer of our world fragility, we would like to forget about.

As you see, shape and meaning shall not be separated and comparison shall not be only formal. It would mean that no one can ever use blue color again, as it would be like Yves Klein. Shape and materials embody artists' visions, they are not important as themselves. What you see is not what you get.

Sincerely yours,
Kader Attia.