Kader Attia “Tsunami“, 2006 © GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano/Beijing/Les Moulins et Le Magasin, CNAC, Grenoble
First look
From corrugated iron, folded like a wave, whose ridge would be twelve meters high, just illuminated by neon lights that emphasize its monumental aspect, at first a seductive object, finally a frightening message: a life-size replica of the wave ff the tsunami of 27 December 2005 that ravaged Asian coasts.
Second look
With his double French and Algerian culture, Kader Attia is an “artist of the collision”, mixing historical references with the world of today, in its cultural, ethnic, social and ecological dimensions: here a natural disaster that overwhelms even more the already impoverished countries of Southern Asia.
Look at history
In 1819, Géricault made the buzz at the Salon : breaking with classical tradition, he showed men struggling with the elements, tossed by the fury of destiny. The liquid wall which stands in front of the spectator draws a new space that, combined with the use of light and the expressiveness of the bodies, announces romanticism. These shipwrecked men also symbolize the excessive optimism of a commander who is too sure of himself. He ran aground off Senegal and caused a shipwreck that revealed the negligence of the Restoration.
Look at our society
It is the surge of a nature that human kind believed for a moment to be able to master, the surge of a South that reminds the North that the future of the planet passes by the solidarity between the North and the south, for a meaningful sustainable development.