Kader Attia  Intifada: The Endless Rhizomes of Revolution

10/06/2024 – 16/06/2024

Art Basel Unlimited
Hall 1 | Booth U26
Messe Basel
Messeplatz 10
4058 Basel, Switzerland

Art Basel Website / Nagel Draxler @ Art Basel

Unlimited Opening (by invitation only)
Monday, June 10, 2024, 4pm – 8pm, First Choice VIP Cardholders
Monday, June 10, 2024, 6pm – 8pm, Preview VIP Cardholders

VIP Days (by invitation only)
Tuesday, June 11, 2024, 11am – 8pm, First Choice VIP Cardholders
Tuesday, June 11, 2024, 4pm – 8pm, Preview VIP Cardholders
Wednesday, June 12, 2024, 11am – 8pm, First Choice and Preview VIP Cardholders

Vernissage Guests (by invitation only)
Wednesday, June 12, 2024, 5pm – 8pm

Public Days
Thursday to Sunday, June 13 – 16, 2024, 11am – 7pm
Thursday to Sunday, June 13 – 16, 2024, 10am – 7pm, First Choice and Preview VIP Cardholders

Unlimited Night
Thursday, June 13, 2024, 7pm – 10pm

Kader Attia’s installation uses the letter ‘Y’ as a figure of branching and splitting, joining and holding together. The single epistemological figure grows into a rhizomatic structure of slingshots, reminiscent of young trees and Nature’s reproductive and branching agency. It also recalls the First Intifada 1987 (also known as the Stone War), when Palestinian youths used such devices to throw stones at heavy weaponry. The work physically and aesthetically evokes the inherited nature of traumas that are passed down from one generation to the next, shaping the biographies of individuals – and thus the destiny of entire societies for centuries. It serves as a metaphor for the organic reappropriation of Nature’s resilience and resistance to the human species and for the endless agency of revolution through which oppressed societies have always emancipated themselves.

Kader Attia (born 1970 in Dugny, France) focuses his work on collective trauma and notions of repair, exploring the far-reaching emotional implications of cultural obfuscation in the history of colonialism, Western cultural hegemony and systems of power on non-Western subjectivities. Attia lives and works in Berlin and Paris.