[1][2][note 1] Attia was born in Dugny, France to Algerian parents and was raised in Paris and Algeria.

[4][5] He studied at the l'école Duperré de Paris, l'école des arts appliqués La Massana de Barcelone and graduated from the Ecole nationale superieure des arts decoratifs Paris, in 1998.

[9][10][11] In 2016, Attia founded La Colonie, a gallery near Paris' Gare du Nord train station.

[16] He is the first artist to curate the biennale since New-York based collective DIS, who presented the 9th edition in 2016.

[15] In November 2021, he had an exhibition entitled "On Silence" at the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha.