ARTLAND

The intensive smell haunts you when entering the exhibition “Make yourself at home” at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. When walking the stairs the smell is pungent. Your nose guides you to a golden glowing city built of couscous on a circle-round table. “Untitled (Ghardaia)” by Kader Attia consists of the large sculpture and two black- and white photographs.

Ghardaia is an Algerian city built from five settlements, with much of its medieval architecture, straight lines and a circular city plan intact. Whitewashed houses terraces along a valley and a minaret on each hilltop.

Le Corbusier and other modern architects visited Ghardaia in the thirties and we can find their source of inspiration in European building design, but here with utopian dimensions.

A medieval town in a rough desert setting inspired the functional aesthetics in Europe.

I read that Attia grew up in a Parisian suburb with his parents who were Algerian immigrants and think of the political aspects of functional architecture and suburban planning. With the building material couscous Attia softly brings the architecture back to its origin and identity.

The sculpture also reminds you about making sand pies as a child. How some forms fell apart when new moulds of sand were raised upon the first ones. Some forms could be connected.  Some were taken down by the sea. You knew it was only temporary. The building-process in itself was fun and the planning of it was made as a  structure for ideas on what you could possibly use and need if living there.  A small society.

The city of Ghardaia is dilapidated today. The city of Kader Attia slowly disintegrates.

In a process of three months everything will fall apart.

The exhibition “Make yourself at home” can be seen in the aftermath of the election in Sweden and an intolerance which eats itself into Europe. Ten artists and artists’ groups show works about hospitality in a globalised world. The exhibition circles around notions of migration, home, displacement, hospitality, international conflicts, belonging, a global state and a colonial heritage. You can see it until November 21^st.

Many more interesting works by A Kassen, Philip Aguirre y Otegui, Kenneth A. Balfelt, Olaf Breuning, Mie Mørkeberg, Otobong Nkanga, George Osodi, Pascale Marthine Tayou and Wooloo. The curators are  Charlotte Bagger Brandt and Koyo Kouoh.