Fragments of Repair

A handbook that activates Kader Attia’s proposition of decolonial repair, featuring original essays and conversations from diverse global contributors.


Today’s entwined crises, from ecological catastrophe to the COVID-19 pandemic to wars in Ukraine and across the world, reveal deep-seated wounds that issue from historical colonialisms and present-day authoritarianisms, economic disparity and growing racial violence, and the abuses inflicted on vulnerable populations and the planet. To address this disquieting chaos, Fragments of Repair, co-conceptualized by artist and curator Kader Attia with curators and researchers Maria Hlavajova and Wietske Maas, offers a collection of long- and short-form essays, visual essays, and conversations on decolonial repair as both a tool and a tactic of engagement with the current state of the world.

The book, which includes major voices such as that of Achille Mbembe and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, develops Attia’s ongoing inquiry into the possibility of enacting “repair” in the acute context of brokenness, which brings chronic uncertainty, social isolation, exhaustion, loss, and fear into sharper relief. What pathways could repair, rather than return to, past ways? How can we develop collective tools for emancipation and resistance? And, in the face of what is irreparable, how can we meaningfully address wounds and scars, which are deeply tied to European modernity?

Contributors:
Norman Ajari, Kader Attia,  Souleymane Bachir Diagne,  Momar Gueye, Maria Hlavajova, Kader Attia, Wietske Maas, Catherine Malabou, Olivier Marboeuf, Achille Mbembe, Wayne Modest, Omedi Ochieng, Stefania Pandolfo, Luciana Parisi, Rachael Rakes,  Rolando Vázquez, Françoise Vergès, Eyal Weizman, Ruth Wilson Gilmore

A BASICS series reader copublished with BAK, basis voor actuele kunst.