Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce Mirrors of Emotion, an exhibition of new and recent work by Kader Attia. Conceived as a continuation of Attia’s recent, critically lauded The Museum of Emotion exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, this exhibition presents a sequence of rooms dedicated to examining the complexities of emotional experience through the lens of collective, individual, and psychoanalytic perspectives. The exhibition will feature two video works, including Attia’s 2016 Marcel Duchamp Prize winning film, Reflecting Memory (2016; 46 minutes) alongside new sculpture, drawings, and an installation of large-scale glass works. There will be an opening reception for the artist on Tuesday, September 10, from 6 to 8 PM at 501 West 24th Street.

Attia grew up in both Paris and Algeria in the decade following the dissolution of French Algeria in 1962, and has devoted his work to examining the wide-ranging effects of colonialism and the repercussions of Western hegemony on non-Western cultures. The exhibition’s title Mirrors of Emotion is inspired by the French philosopher Etienne de la Boétie’s theory that describes how a tyrant will create visual omnipresence within society—by appearing constantly in public space and therefore becoming internalized by the people—not only as a reminder of their power, but also to allow the populace to see themselves reflected in the tyrant. French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Lacan coined the term hainamoration to capture the fusion of hatred and enamoration that results. In this way, a tyrant becomes a mirror of emotions for the population and individual. Attia contends that we live in an era where emotional reaction to demographic change and economic inequality propels a new populism, appropriated as a form of catharsis. This emotional response characterized by collective and individual victimization is represented in Attia’s works through research that links individual histories with collective ones.