If you saw African masks displayed alongside natural history specimens in almost any other context you’d be forgiven for wanting to make a complaint. That kind of anthropological attitude once led to whole tribes being classed as “fauna” in the colonial taxonomy of the Serengeti. But this isn’t any other context, this is Kader Attia’s first UK survey at the Hayward Gallery, open today until 6 May. Here, the cheetah gazes wide-eyed through a human’s animal mask at the conditions of its own display, observing a myriad of subtle and not-so-subtle tensions from within. Intelligent and empathic, Attia’s urgent probing of museography, post-colonial culture and inherited trauma is playful, but his work has teeth as sharp as any big cat’s.
