BRUSSELS.- This autumn the French-Algerian artist Kader Attia is presenting a towering installation in the Centre for Fine Arts, with which he reflects on the tension between religion and science, in man’s endless quest for total knowledge. Moreover, a new site-specific installation is currently on view at the Middelheim Museum, Antwerp.

Rather than thinking of himself as an artist the French-Algerian artist Kader Attia (b. 1970) considers himself a researcher. His multi-media installations, which often are rooted in history and archival research, explore ideas around identity in a globalised world. Attia’s fascination for identity and the exchanges between Western and non-Western cultures is largely informed by his own multicultural background. He grew up in Algeria and the Parisian suburbs and subsequently lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Venezuela.

In the Centre for Fine Arts Attia presents a work with which he reflects on the tension between religion and science in man’s endless quest for total knowledge, using the biblical story of Jacob’s ladder as his starting premise. In his dream the patriarch Jacob sees angels ascending the ladder that connects earth with heaven. The artwork is a towering structure, a library that fills the space from floor to ceiling. At the centre of the library is a cabinet of curiosities filled with rare artefacts, scientific instruments and books by authors such as the philosopher Descartes and the biologist Alfred Russel Wallace. There is a small staircase near the cabinet. If you look up at the mirrored ceiling you suddenly see the rungs of the ladder and find yourself in an infinity reflection of the library of accumulated human knowledge and science.

This installation is a new chapter in Attia’s research into the concept of “repair”. Rather than thinking of repair as simply rebuilding what is broken Attia sees it as the invention of new hybrid forms. Old contradictions are often connected and turned into something new. Foregoing the typical Western form of linear thinking Attia pays more attention to other patterns. In his work Attia shows that instead of development, evolution or decay there are combinations, realignments, convergences, ramifications and hybrids.

Continuum of Repair: The Light of Jacob’s Ladder (2013) was commissioned by the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and was exhibited in its premises from 26.11.2013 to 23.11.2014