Big Bang

Image

Kader Attia (Dugny, 1970), Big Bang, 2005

© Christophe Fouin, mahJ

When visitors entered the main courtyard of the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan for the Nuit blanche event in 2005, they were met by this faceted globe. The Franco-Algerian artist Kader Attia was commissioned to create this work for the mahJ’s first participation in this annual contemporary art festival organised by Paris City Hall. In his videos, sculptures and installations, Kader Attia explores the testing of individual and social bodies by postcolonial history and the wounds this has caused. This sphere, bristling with shining crescents and stars of David, could almost be a celestial body recreated in a planetarium. Big Bang reminds us of the shared roots of Jewish and Muslim culture, the reflections of its countless mirrors simultaneously recreating their diffractions and dispersions.