Redress as a phenomenon – A conversation with Kader ATTIA

The Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest is organising a professional afternoon event featuring the artist Kader ATTIA.

The event will explore the concept of ‘repair’ and its artistic, social and political implications through lectures, screenings and a question-and-answer panel discussion that will also provide an opportunity for active audience participation.

During the afternoon, art historian and curator Timea Junghaus will offer reflections on Kader Attia’s presentation, considering the domestic and regional context. Timea Junghaus is a leading figure in the Roma cultural and political movement. Through her research and curatorial work, she examines modern and contemporary art using critical theory, with a particular focus on cultural differences, the effects of the colonial past and the representation of minorities.

The event will be held in English; no interpretation will be provided.

Kader Attia is an internationally recognised Algerian-French contemporary visual artist who currently lives and works in Berlin and Paris; he was the curator of the 12th Berlin Biennale in 2022 and has also been invited to curate the 7th Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2027–2028).

The central themes of his art are cultural identity, the legacy of colonisation, collective trauma, and his own philosophical and political concept of ‘repair’. The concept of ‘repair’ is also the focus of the Ludwig Museum’s professional afternoon event.

For many years, Attia has been exploring the way in which societies view their own history, with particular regard to experiences of deprivation and oppression, violence and loss, and how this influences the development of nations and individuals – all of which are linked to collective memory.

His works aim at restoration, forming a kind of cultural resistance through the reappropriation of the body – as the bearer of physical scars – and of history – as the repository of civilisational and social scars. Many of his works allude to arbitrary cultural hierarchies and can also be interpreted as institutional critique.

Kader Attia’s work has been recognised with the most prestigious French contemporary art prize, the Prix Marcel Duchamp (2016), as well as the Spanish Premio Joan Miró (2017). His works are held in such major public collections around the world as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, MoMA in New York and the Tate Modern in London.

In Hungary, a work by him has been part of the Ludwig Museum’s collection since 2019; furthermore, several exhibitions and projects in the museum’s programme have been linked to Attia’s field of research and his restorative approach – he featured in exhibitions at the Ludwig Museum in 2022 (Development), in 2025 (Found in the Field) and in 2026 (Golden Repair), and she also took part in the main exhibition of the 5th OFF Biennale (2025).