Kader Attia’s interdisciplinary, research-based practice examines the long-term effects of colonial violence and the political, social, and psychological dimensions of ‘repair’. For Attia, repair is a fundamental principle: every system, social institution, or cultural tradition can be understood as an endless process of repair. He explores how societies confront injury, trauma, and rupture, as well as the attitudes they adopt towards their own history—particularly in response to experiences of deprivation, oppression, violence, and loss. Attia’s slide-projection The Debt (2013) is based on his archival research on the Tirailleurs, drawing on historical newspapers, photographs, texts, and objects. It interrogates the image evoked by the term Tirailleur, tracing the racist continuities arising from its invention to illuminate and challenge contemporary forms of racism in societies shaped by migration. Attia maps the Tirailleurs’ genealogy as objects of white patriarchal and colonial fantasy. Through several sculptures, images, and objects, Attia shows how colonial images are normalized and internalized through repetition, such as the use of the advertising figure of the chocolate drink Banania—a Senegalese Tirailleur with the racist slogan ‘y’a bon’. Drawing on Frantz Fanon, the work reveals how language, advertising, and visual culture contribute to humiliation and dehumanization. The wooden bust sculpture Untitled (Janus) (2026) embodies the dialectics of colonizer/colonized. Complementing the work, Attia displays books from his own collection that expand on the historical context of reparations.

Commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), co-produced by Kader Attia and HKW, 2026

Works in the exhibition: Untitled (Janus) (2020/26), wooden bust, steel stand, 80 × 50 x 90 cm, stand: 160 × 50 × 50 cm; The Debt (2013), 2-channel digital slide-projection, 9' 33"; Untitled (Totem) (2013/26), totem made of Banania metal boxes, plaster sculpture, 180 × 25 × 25 cm; Fetishization (2026), bronze sculpture inspired by a medallion worn by Tirailleurs, 40 × 30 × 10 cm; Untitled (2012/26), series of 20 framed prints, dimensions variable; Untitled (2013/26), 7 books stitched with metal wires, dimensions variable. All courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nagel Draxler Berlin, Cologne, Meseberg