Kader Attia: Irreparable Repairs

Lehmann Maupin presents Irreparable Repairs, an exhibition of new work by French-Algerian artist Kader Attia. For more than 20 years Attia’s practice has been rooted in notions of injury and repair through works that span photography, sculpture, installation, and video. His work examines how societies and individuals bear the marks of historical trauma—and how those wounds are “repaired,” though never erased. This idea serves as a metaphor for colonial histories, personal trauma, and collective memory throughout Attia’s work. In Irreparable Repairs, Attia’s first solo exhibition in Seoul, the artist expands on this fundamental tenet of his practice to explore his recent interests in ideas of fragmentation and gathering, as well as themes of Shamanism, mysticism, and the effects of mnemonic traces on individual and collective consciousness. Irreparable Repairs opens alongside Attia’s inclusion in the Venice Biennale’s In Minor Keys, MoMA’s Architects of Liberation: Modernism in Western Africa, the Brooklyn Museum’s Breaking the Mold: Brooklyn Museum at 200, and ahead of the artist’s curation of the 2027 Kochi Biennale. By bringing together new work from across his oeuvre, Irreparable Repairs, offers a glimpse into Attia’s practice today, illuminating his various avenues of inquiry, artistic concerns, and recent research—including enduring questions alongside new explorations.