BILDMUSEET 19/06 24/10 2021 ENGLISH
ZINEB SEDIRA/ STANDING HERE WONDERING WHICH WAY TO GO
19/0624/10
ZINEB SEDIRA / STANDING HERE WONDERING WHICH WAY TO GO
INTRODUCTION
Zineb Sedira’s exhibition Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go is about culture and resistance, about time, place and identity. Focusing on Algeria’s capital Algiers which, during the 1960s, was a hub for freedom-fighting organisations, Sedira presents the Pan-African Festival 1969 as an example of how culture contributed to a unique spirit of solidarity and international involvement. The exhibition features a replica of the artist’s living room, a diorama adorned with furniture and interior details. Photomontages, album covers, books and films all evoke this time and movement. The installation is divided into four parts or “scenes”. The first scene, the film mise-en-scène, projected on a wall in the exhibition, is composed of the remains of deteriorated found film footages. For a Brief Moment the World Was on Fire…, which comprises the second scene, is a series of photomontages about the political and cultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. The third scene is entitled Way of Life and is a full-scale model of Sedira’s living room. The last scene, We Have Come Back, is drawn from her vinyl record collection of radical political music from the 1960s. Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go reflects a period of creative energy and resistance when freedom-movements were inspired by Algeria’s independence process. A French colony since 1830, Algeria gained its independence through an intense war of liberation that lasted from 1954 to 1962. A large portion of Zineb Sedira’s work is autobiographical. It is based on her view of herself and her family’s history in Algeria, France and Great Britain, not least from postcolonial
perspectives. The transmission of memories between generations and the fragility of memories are recurring themes. She was born in France to Algerian parents the year after Algeria’s liberation from French colonial rule. She grew up in a suburb of Paris in the 1960s and 1970s, in a context characterized by an African diaspora. This was the lens through which she viewed world events and current cultural expressions. Family friends visiting the home spoke of the struggle for freedom and international solidarity. The music and literature were radical and uncompromising. In her art, Zineb Sedira returns to how this unique zeitgeist shaped her as a person. She examines the relationship between collective and subjective memories; how events and phenomena are experienced in different ways by different people and how source material can be interpreted differently depending on the context in which it is presented. The exhibition title, Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go, is borrowed from a gospel song by the American singer Marion Williams (1927–1994). It expresses a sense of uncertainty that is eminently relevant here and now, just as it was in the period embodied by this work of art.
Zineb Sedira (b. 1963, France, based in the UK) was educated in London at the Royal College of Art, the Slade School of Art and Central Saint Martin’s School of Art. She has exhibited around the world, including in solo exhibitions at the Jeu de Paume, Paris; Beirut Art Center, Beirut; the Photographer’s Gallery, London, and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, as well as in group exhibitions at the Tate Britain, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Mori Museum, Tokyo and several art biennials, including the Venice Biennale and the Sharjah Biennale. In 2010, her art was presented in a large solo exhibition at Bildmuseet. Zineb Sedira will represent France at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go was commissioned by Bildmuseet in collaboration with Jeu de Paume in Paris; IVAM in Valencia and Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon. The exhibition has been produced with support from the Institut Français de Suède.
Bildmuseet / 40 Years of International Contemporary Art in Umeå, Sweden
19/0624/10
ZINEB SEDIRA / STANDING HERE WONDERING WHICH WAY TO GO
ARTWORKS IN THE EXHIBITION
Zineb Sedira Scene 1: mise-en-scène, 2019 [Scene 1: Staging] Film made out of decaying found footage rushes Music: Mohamed Iguerbouchène 8:54 min The Algerian film industry flourished during the 1960s to 1980s (the decades immediately following independence), only to subsequently fade into obscurity as a result of the country’s economic and political situation. In the Algerian film archives, Zineb Sedira discovered a treasure trove of the country’s diverse past film production, ranging from poetic feature films to pure propaganda films. This became the starting point for this work. In a second-hand shop, she found a box with old film reels (16 mm and 35 mm) and examined what was on them. According to the store owner, they had belonged to a retired cinema projectionist. Many of the film reels were damaged. Most of them had some kind of militant content and all were previously unknown to the artist. She scanned and stitched/collaged together this material, allowing new interpretations to emerge. She also sees the scratches, cracks and degradation of this film archive as an important part of the new work. The visible decay becomes a metaphor for the fragility and vulnerability of the archived memories.
BILDMUSEET FLOOR 5
Zineb Sedira Scene 2: For a Brief Moment the World Was on Fire…, 2019 Photomontages with various 1960s objects and books In a series of photo montages, Zineb Sedira has compiled clippings from newspapers and magazines, photographs and political slogans from her research in several archives in Algiers and Paris. They reflect aspects of the zeitgeist that characterised Algiers and the rest of the world in the 1960s and which was a source of inspiration for freedom-fighting movements. Here, real-world political events are reflected, but the documentary content is contrasted with the playful presentation of the objects that the artist has collected in the course of her life. Books and sculptures complement and nuance the story and give it a personal framework. This creates the sense that the personal is political, and the political personal. By staging her own subjective memories, she aims to evoke this period in the collective memory. The artist gratefully acknowledges the support of: Archives nationales d’Algérie; service iconographique de la Cinémathèque d’Alger; les Glycines – Centre d’études diocésain, Alger; Centre national de la cinématographie et de l’audiovisuel, Alger; bibliothèque du Centre culturel algérien, Paris; archives du musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, Paris – fonds Premier festival culturel panafricain d’Alger (21 juillet-1er août 1969); 3 AAI
Zineb Sedira Scene 3: Way of Life, 2019 Full-scale model of the artist’s living room. Installation with photo wallpaper, furniture, books, plants, objects Way of Life is a replica of the artist’s living room in the Brixton district of London. The paintings on the walls, shelves and interior details are reproduced in the form of a photo wallpaper and the room is decorated with the artist’s own furniture, books and other objects. The installation portrays the architecture of the home as a kind of scenography – the home as a backdrop against which we live our lives, which can tell something about our personal history, our experiences, our memories and the ideals of the time. The home as a kind of autobiography. The work reminds us that it is we who breathe life into architecture, that it is we who create our homes based on who we are and who we want to be. For Zineb Sedira, the living room is also a metaphor for hospitality. She invites us to sit down on her 1960s sofa, to flip through books on Algeria, on resistance movements and various cultural expressions, to listen to music and watch an interview with the Algerian art historian and curator Nadira Laggoune-Aklouche shown on the living room’s TV. Laggoune-Aklouche recounts her experiences and thoughts relating to the iconic cultural Festival panafricain [the Pan-African Festival], which took place in Algiers in 1969 and is a great source of inspiration for Zineb Sedira. There are also books with transcribed speeches given during the festival, music performed there and photos of the people who gathered there.
The objects in the room transport visitors back to the 1960s and to a zeitgeist marked by resistance and solidarity, which defined the period immediately following Algeria’s independence. Zineb Sedira shares the creativity of the freedom-fighting movements of the 1960s, when political activism and cultural activism worked together for liberation from imperialism, sexism, racism and capitalism. The installation also includes contributions from other artists that Zineb Sedira has invited to contribute to the sense of time and place: the photographer and filmmaker William Klein, the photo artist Jason Oddy and the film director and music collector Nabil Djedouani. William Klein La foule algérienne attendait la fête du siècle: elle a été plus ou moins comblée, 1969 [The Algerian crowd awaited the festival of the century: it was more or less satisfied] Numbered colour photograph William Klein Original poster for the film Le Festival panafricain d’Alger [The Pan-African Festival in Algiers] by William Klein, first shown in 1972 in Paris Unknown photographer Performances at the Pan-African Festival in Algiers Original photograph, 1969 Gift from l’Association Lumière, Algiers
Jason Oddy Bloc des salles de classe IV, Université des sciences et de la technologie Houari Boumediene, Bab Ezzouar, Algérie, 2013 [Classroom Unit IV, Houari Boumediene University of Science and Technology, Bab Ezzouar, Algeria] Colourprint Jason Oddy La Coupole I, Alger, 2013 [The Dome I, Algiers] Colourprint Nabil Djedouani We Have Come Back, poem by Ted Joans for the 1969 Panaf Playlist, 2019 30 min Zineb Sedira Nadira, 2019 Filmed interview 40:21 min
Zineb Sedira Scene 4: We Have Come Back Collected vinyl records of music from the 1960s In the work We Have Come Back, Zineb Sedira highlights her own vinyl record collection with radical music from the 1960s created by artists who advocated liberation from colonialism and imperialism and the struggle for civil rights and equality. Included alongside a diverse range of African rhythms performed during the festival, are well-known, politically engaged artists from the 1960s and 1970s such as Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Cliff, Archie Shepp, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Joan Baez and Victor Jara. The title We Have Come Back is borrowed from a poem by the poet Ted Joans (1928–2003). The same title was used for one of the American jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp’s (b. 1937) appearances together with Ted Joans during the Pan-African Festival in Algiers in 1969.
ARCHITECTURES OF TRANSITION /
ZINEB SEDIRA / STANDING HERE WONDERING WHICH WAY TO GO
PETER ÖHRNELL / MÅLNINGAR
NAEEM MOHAIEMEN / JOLE DOBE NA
ÅRETS SVENSKA BILDERBOK / BILDVERKSTAD
RECEPTION
HUVUDENTRÉ
NAEEM MOHAIEMEN / JOLE DOBE NA
ENTRÉ
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