Kader Attia: Reason's Oxymorons, 2015 18 films and installation of cubicles, 55 by 262 by 468 inches overall. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong. Photo Max Yawney.
Berlin- and Paris-based Kader Attia’s labyrinthine video installation Reason’s Oxymorons (2015) is a forbidding artwork to enter. The eighteen videos are shown on monitors in individual cubicles, the dark gray shoulder-high walls and sound-muffling carpeting familiar to office worker anywhere. Each video is a straightforward interview with a psychiatrist, theorist, healer, patient, etc., from a European or African country; Attia’s questions are only occasionally included. The engrossing videos offer a window into the way Western and non-Western cultures confront trauma that results from, for example, genocide. (Other interview topics include Totem and Fetish, Reason and Politics, and Trance.) —Leigh Anne Miller
Pictured: Kader Attia: Reason’s Oxymorons, 2015 18 films and installation of cubicles, 55 by 262 by 468 inches overall. Courtesy Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong. Photo Max Yawney.