The room is barely lit with unadorned light bulbs. Rows of beds are lined up in a crowded, spartan room. Cheap foam pads showcase the weighty voids of sleeping figures, yet the occupants themselves are disconcertingly missing. This is hardly the typical dorm room. You had better believe that this is high art.
Kader Attia's newest installation, "Sleeping from Memory," for the Institute of Contemporary Art's (ICA) "Momentum 9" series, harkens on the pestilence of the collective past of the artist as well as humanity at large. As an Algerian émigré, Attia spent much of his youth in abysmal rooms like the one he constructed for the ICA. Family members would crowd the small space, resting on inexpensive homemade beds made from plywood and foam. The exhibit is far from decadent, to be sure.
Notably, in recreating his childhood memory, Attia has removed the occupants of the beds. The notion of absence is both literal and figurative - only the impressions remain. Yet the commonality of these sleepers and their own possibly unique dreams create a dichotomy between the situational and mental. The installation seems to make a statement through its lack of statement.
Although Attia has no signature style, his use of mundane materials and fascination with the idea of loss unites his work. His previous installations, such as "Flying Rats," where birdseed-molded child forms were eaten by birds, are testaments to the interactive, evocative use of materials.
Ironically, "Sleeping from Memory" is an exception. The cheap foam he once slept on as a child has become the modern bourgeois mattress of choice. Save the plywood mattress box and headboard, the beds have an air of regality. That which was once pauperized is now luxurious.
Attia enlisted the aid of students from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and the ICA Teen Arts Council to fashion the forms in the bed. Each student traced his or her outline on the foam and dug out the excess matter. The result is a striking impression of personal loss, only made more intense by the humanity of the forms.
According to Attia's description, "[The students] draw their own absence. The emptiness of the shape of their body becomes more important than the real body."
Attia's singular memory and idea for the work thereby became a poignant universal effort.
Regardless of how the figures were constructed, the human voids resemble casts of fossilized figures. The impression of the individual who once was there is all that remains. The spirit haunts the bed, much like an affecting memory pervades in dreams.
The installation is a moment frozen in time, with the carved figures frozen in the positions they will continue to assume for eternity (or at least as long as the exhibit lasts). Attia seems to tease the viewer with the question of whether it is possible for a room of anonymous casts to have both individuality and a higher social or political identity.
In any case, the "Sleeping from Memory" installation is far from a soporific bore. The exhibit is relegated to a separate gallery, away from the sculptures and paintings which line neighboring galleries. Although the ICA has a relatively small gallery space, Attia's newest installation is reason alone to explore this Boston harbor museum.
