The Hubris of Modernity: Kader Attia

Regen Projects is pleased to present The Hubris of Modernity, Kader Attia’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Attia’s practice highlights and challenges the enduring legacies of Western colonialism via a rigorous, research-based process that examines the psychoanalytical and sociological effects of shared histories. This presentation of new sculptures and large-scale installations builds upon the artist’s longstanding critical inquiries and delves into the complex exchanges between nature and society, history and culture, and tradition and modernity. 

An installation of mechanically choreographed rainstick instruments visually and aurally centers the exhibition. Activated by rotary motors, the percussive instruments evoke the sound of rain through poetic, circular movements. Moving collectively and individually, the clock-like motion of the rainsticks alludes to the cycles of falling rain and the passing of time. The work addresses humanity’s illusory superiority over nature and meditates on the rhythms of our collective existence. 

With Urban Rivers, a free-standing, gate-like metal structure, Attia traces the legacies of colonialism and empire apparent in urban environments. Elevated from the ground as a screen, the sculpture’s chaotic latticework references cracks found in asphalt or cement, wounds within society's built environment. A memorialization of interstitial spaces, the sculpture confronts the fantasy of a utopian metropolis untouched by time and nature. The exploration of these lesions is extended in a projected slideshow of Attia's photographs of urban environments. Echoed by an installation of windows in the gallery wall, these interventions reveal unexpected dimensions and fragmented perspectives as framing devices.

Attia’s preoccupation with fragmentation and perspective is further evident in a series of zoomorphic Mirror Masks, each depicting an animal (panther, monkey, lion, and bull). The sculptures, composed of replicas of African masks covered with mirror fragments, act as metaphorical portals to non-western, premodern cultures, where the artist is not pursuing mimetic representation restricted to the gaze, but rather an emotional and physical experience through the body. This visual strategy speaks to what historian Rolando Vázquez describes in Vistas of Modernity as “the hubris of the zero point”– the western claim to an absolute, objective viewpoint grounded in linear, one-point perspective as codified by Brunelleschi. This gesture reenacts the moment when Cubists like Picasso and Braque encountered the angularity of African masks and became fascinated by the absence of a singular perspective. Encountering their own “cubicized” reflection on the surface of the sculpture, the contemporary viewer will see their image fragmented, a portrayal of the multifaceted nature of being.

Deploying evocative formal, critical, and material strategies, The Hubris of Modernity surveys themes of colonial ambition in urban and natural environments, historical legacies of trauma and repair, and ongoing attempts to resist mechanisms of power.