This installation by French-Algerian artist Kader Attia forms a solo presentation of moving image and slide projections. The piece questions the practices of colonialization that have shaped the Western dominance of the world, both past and present.
Dispossession, 2013, considers the Vatican’s collection of African artefacts, accumulated by Christian missionaries operating in Africa over centuries. Attia shows these objects with scenes associated with the colonization of Africa alongside interviews with an anthropologist, historian, priest and lawyer who address the ethics of collecting.
The work highlights the influence of the non-Western world on the West. It shows how this influence is often disregarded and proposes that this imbalance must be addressed in order for repair to be achieved.
Dispossession was acquired for the Middlesbrough Collection, held by mima, through the first Contemporary Art Society Collections Fund at Frieze in 2016.
