diane arbus: in the beginning / Kader Attia: The Museum of Emotion

From February 13 to May 6, 2019, Hayward Gallery presents two solo exhibitions across the upper and lower floors of the gallery, diane arbus: in the beginning and Kader Attia: The Museum of Emotion.  

The Museum of Emotion, which takes over Hayward’s lower galleries and HENI Project Space, traces several strands of Kader Attia’s poetic, urgent and political work from the past two decades. In his sculptures, installations, collages, videos and photographs, Attia inventively explores the ways in which colonialism continues to shape how Western societies represent and engage with non-Western cultures, and offers a passionate critique of modern Western systems of control that define everything from traditional museology to the design of modernist social housing.

A key group of works in The Museum of Emotion engage with the idea of repair as both a physical and symbolic act. These include objects “repaired” by the artist using techniques and materials employed in certain non-Western cultures, as well as videos and large-scale installations that explore the way in which repair relates to psychological as well as physical injury, and to collective as well as individual trauma. In this exhibition, Attia transforms detailed research into compelling works of art, and at the same time probes the ways in which the museum itself might be transformed into a forum for emotional response, capable of eliciting, exploring and even harnessing strongly held feelings of anger, sorrow, joy and grief.

Presented in Hayward’s upper galleries is diane arbus: in the beginning, an exhibition exploring the first seven years of the influential photographer’s career, from 1956 to 1962.

Diane Arbus (1923–1971) made most of her photographs in New York City, where she was born and died, and where she worked in locations such as Times Square, the Lower East Side and Coney Island. Her photographs of children and eccentrics, couples and circus performers, female impersonators and midtown shoppers, are among the most intimate, surprising and haunting works of art of the 20th century.

Organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and adapted for Hayward Gallery, diane arbus: in the beginning takes an in-depth look at the formative first half of Arbus’ career, during which the photographer developed the direct, psychologically acute style for which she later became so widely celebrated. The exhibition features more than 100 photographs, the majority of which are vintage prints made by the artist, drawn from the Diane Arbus Archive at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. More than two-thirds of these photographs have never been seen before in the UK. 

Tracing the development of Arbus’ early work with a 35mm camera to the distinctive square format she began using in 1962, the exhibition concludes with a presentation of A box of ten photographs, the portfolio Arbus produced in 1970 and 1971, comprising legendary portraits including Identical twins, Roselle, N.J. 1967 and A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y. 1970.

diane arbus: in the beginning is organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and curated by Jeff L. Rosenheim, Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs. The accompanying catalogue published by The Met and Yale University Press is available from the Hayward Gallery Shop.

Kader Attia: The Museum of Emotion is curated by Hayward Gallery Director Ralph Rugoff, with Assistant Curator Sophie Oxenbridge and Curatorial Assistant Alyssa Bacon. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue that features an interview with the artist by Ralph Rugoff alongside texts by Nicola Clayton, Jean-Michel Frodon, Françoise Vergès and Giovanna Zapperi, as well as a special publication devoted to Attia’s photographic series “The Landing Strip”.