A ‘Product of Colonialism’ Represents France at the Venice Biennale

LONDON — When the Venice Artwork Biennale opens its doorways to the general public this weekend, France will probably be represented for the primary time by an artist of Algerian descent.

Zineb Sedira is that artist, and her appointment is historic in a number of methods. Solely a handful of feminine artists have been showcased by the French Pavilion because it was inaugurated in 1912. Extra unusually, Ms. Sedira is a baby of working-class immigrants who settled in France within the early Sixties, proper across the time that Algeria put an finish to about 130 years of French colonial rule. Her group has suffered a long time of racism and discrimination.

How does it really feel to signify France in such a context?

“It’s an awesome alternative to pave the way in which for different artists like me,” Ms. Sedira mentioned in an interview at her studio in south London, which overlooks a busy highway and is stuffed with visible throwbacks to post-independence Algeria. “Higher now than by no means.”

She attributed her choice to the truth that for the primary time, the French Pavilion choice committee was gender-balanced and various. “However that doesn’t imply that I’m not going to be attacked, criticized by a sure group of individuals,” she mentioned. “It’s going to be painful.”

To some extent, it already has been. In January 2020, when her title was introduced as France’s consultant on the Venice Biennale, the French web site Causeur wrote an editorial demanding that France withdraw the nomination as a result of, it mentioned, Ms. Sedira had refused to take part in an exhibition in Israel in 2017 and was an “ardent supporter” of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions motion, or B.D.S., which, in solidarity with the Palestinians, seeks to place financial and political stress on Israel. French-Jewish teams and personalities such because the gallerist Jacqueline Frydman and the thinker Bernard-Henri Lévy expressed shock on the Venice appointment till Ms. Sedira responded with a public assertion that she had by no means boycotted the 2017 exhibition, that she didn’t assist the B.D.S. motion and that she wouldn’t step apart because the artist representing France.

Ms. Sedira, 59, was born within the Paris suburb of Gennevilliers, one in every of 9 kids of an Algerian manufacturing facility employee and a homemaker who migrated to France and with whom she has at all times been shut. She remembered how, as a little bit woman with ribbons in her hair, she would accompany her father to the native cinema to observe spaghetti Westerns, big-budget Hollywood productions equivalent to “Cleopatra,” and Egyptian melodramas.

As a youngster, her movie show of alternative turned the Cinéma Jean Vigo, additionally in Gennevilliers, which confirmed art-house but additionally militant, anti-colonialist movies. (She held her first French Pavilion information convention there in February, and will probably be recreating the cinema in Venice.)

Rising up in Gennevilliers was robust. All by way of her childhood and adolescence, Ms. Sedira mentioned, she witnessed her mother and father being disrespected, and guarded them in addition to she might. She snapped again at market distributors who addressed them utilizing the acquainted “tu” for “you” as an alternative of the formal “vous,” or at passers-by who greeted them with racist insults.

After finishing a pictures course, Ms. Sedira moved to Paris when she was 18, began mixing with artists and musicians, then moved once more, to London. There, she studied at high artwork faculties — Central Saint Martins and the Slade Faculty of Wonderful Artwork. Quickly after graduating, she had her first exhibition — on the Gallery of Trendy Artwork in Glasgow. It consisted of an area lined with geometrically patterned, Moroccan-style tiles picturing 4 generations of girls in her household together with herself.

“Coming to England helped me so much, as a result of I abruptly was distanced from this type of pathological relationship with Algeria,” she defined. “I had a unique approach of taking a look at French colonial historical past” that was “extra mental and fewer emotional, so I turned much less emotional about this type of racism and was capable of clarify it,” although not “settle for it.”

She settled in Brixton, south London (the place she nonetheless lives) and made pals with artists together with Sonia Boyce, who’s representing Britain on the Venice Biennale this yr — the primary Black British girl to take action.

In a phone interview, Ms. Boyce described Ms. Sedira as “a celebration woman” who was “very sociable, excellent at bringing individuals collectively.” Ms. Boyce additionally mentioned that Ms. Sedira was “very vivid by way of having the ability to distill what it’s that’s occurring politically and culturally round us.”

Ms. Sedira works primarily in movie and pictures. She makes artwork that’s private, usually beginning as a dialogue with a number of members of the family, and that displays on her a number of identities: British, French, Algerian, Berber, Arab, African.

“I’m a product of colonialism, as a result of I used to be born in France however ought to have been born in Algeria,” she mentioned within the interview. “If my mother and father hadn’t been colonized, I might be there immediately. I’m a legacy of all of the tales and all of the struggling.”

“I believe there are at all times traces,” she mentioned. “I’m turning them right into a wealthy expertise as a result of I don’t need to preserve speaking about how terrible it was.”

Ms. Sedira’s Venice work, “Desires Have No Titles,” will probably be a 25-minute “kaleidoscope,” a movie inside a movie that will probably be a loosely poetic evocation of her life. It can embody clips from movies produced by Algeria within the post-colonial period, remakes of scenes from these movies and behind-the-scenes photos of her personal creative course of. The pavilion may even function units and décors, equivalent to a reconstitution of her Brixton dwelling, a model of a piece she confirmed on the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris in 2019.

Ms. Sedira’s gallerist Kamel Mennour, additionally a baby of Algerian immigrants, mentioned the truth that a girl of Algerian origin would signify France this yr was “a rare sign,” as a result of “we want flag-bearers who can present us the way in which.”

“Nationalism at all times has a patriotic, inward-looking side to it,” he mentioned. “Zineb is opening up the vary of potentialities.”