24/01/2020

Focus on the French-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira


According to Le Monde French-Algerian female artist Zineb Sedira will represent France at the Venice Biennale in 2021!

La Franco-Algérienne Zineb Sedira représentera la France à la Biennale de Venise 2021

Ses parents luttèrent pour l’indépendance de l’Algérie avant d’émigrer en France. Depuis lors, récit intime et grande Histoire traversent le travail de l’artiste.

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Portrait here, and a great reminder of the role Algiers had for the anti colonial movement:


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On her recent exhibition in Paris' Jeu de Paume, here is an article from Hyperallergic:
"An Artist Activates Histories Through Memory" 


Zineb Sedira’s art is one of rare generosity. Using her own history of migration as the starting point for each artistic journey she embarks upon, Sedira conveys the political through the personal. Born in Paris to Algerian parents who immigrated to France in the early 1960s, she moved to London in 1986, when she was in her early 20s and remains there today. The experience of immigration and travel so deeply embedded in her family’s personal history has since informed the artist’s work. A Brief Moment, her current exhibition at Jeu de Paume, is a testament to this autobiographical approach. Encompassing various media, such as film, video, installation, and photography, the exhibition showcases works from 1998 to the present, including a large, site-specific installation that Sedira created especially for the show.
(...)
The highlight of the exhibition is certainly Sedira’s new installation, Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go (2019). The piece takes its title from a song recorded in 1971 by Marion Williams, an African American gospel singer, preceded by Mahalia Jackson’s 1956 recording, and written by Gospel music pioneer Thomas A. Dorsey. Sedira’s work was inspired by the Pan-African festival that took place in Algiers in 1969, and marked Algeria’s important role in various liberation movements.
(...)
In Sedira’s work, archival material is not dead and past, but is active, imbued with intimacy and a cinematic quality suggesting that there is no such thing as “frozen in time.” Histories are a constant balance of stillness, when we attempt to grasp them, and motion, as they metamorphose — much like Sedira’s body of work.

Read the whole article here: 

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More from Le Jeu de Paume:





Zineb Sedira lives in London and work in Paris, London and Algiers. Her one-woman exhibition at the Jeu de Paume spans the period from 1998 to the present day and embraces such diverse media as video, film, installation and photography. The title reflects the consciousness of time that Sedira’s works portray. Several installations in this exhibition are based on her specific interest in collecting, recording and transmitting histories. The evolution of the form, function and impact of images in societies worldwide are evidently part of Sedira’s observation when dealing with archive material. Although Sedira’s work has often been largely identified with postcolonial issues and in particular with her family history, closely linked to Algeria, “A brief moment” also highlights the manner in which she explores the exponential devastation of the environment through over-production, universal circulation of people and goods. 

Assembling five multimedia installations and some photographic and film works, the show reveals different forms of change that occurred in the XXth century: the intense development of the automobile industry (The End of the Road, 2010) and the development of transportation of freight corresponding to global exploitation and transformation of primary and secondary resources by first world countries as a direct consequence of imperialism (Lighthouse in the Sea of Time, 2010 ; Brocken Lens, 2011 ; Transmettre en abyme, 2012), the history and the independence of colonialised countries and in particular Algeria (Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go, 2019 ; Laughter in Hell, 2018)… By her personal implication and her physical presence in the works, their documentary nature is directly linked to her engagement as an artist which she sees as her commitment to society and to democracy. 

Curators: Zineb Sedira and Pia Viewing

Exhibition produced by Jeu de Paume.

With the support of Fluxus Art Projects.

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EXHIBITIONS SCHEDULES IN 2020:


SOLO
Zineb Sedira: Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go, Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, Portugal (7th May – 6th July 2020)
Zineb Sedira, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill on Sea, UK (19 Sept. – January 2021)
Zineb Sedira: Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go, Bilmuseet, Umeå, Sweden (17 Oct. – 14 March 2021) 

GROUP

Sixty Years, Tate Britain, London (22 April 2019 – April 2020)
Politics in Art, MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art in Krakow, Poland  (24 April 2020 – 27 September 2020)
Globale Resistance,  Pompidou Centre, Permanent collections, Paris, France (24 June 2020 – 26 Oct. 2020)
The Stomach and the Port, Liverpool Biennial 2020, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool (11 July 2020 – 25 Oct. 2020)


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