Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1963 Paris, France

Year of Migration to the UK: 1986

Biography

Photographer and video artist Zineb Sedira was born to Algerian immigrant parents in the suburb of Gennevilliers in Paris on 1 April 1963. Her parents, Abdul Rahman Sedira and Oumessaad Rouabah, arrived in France after the Algerian War of Independence against the French colonial occupation. In 1986, she moved to London, England, where she pursued higher education in the arts. From 1992 to 1995, she studied for her BA (Hons) in Critical Fine Art Practice at Central Saint Martins School of Art, followed by an MFA in Media at the Slade School of Fine Art (University of London) between 1995 and 1997. Finally, she conducted research at the Photography Department of the Royal College of Art (RCA), London from 1998 until 2003.

Sedira’s work focuses on the relationships humans have with geography and the environment, with a specific emphasis on North Africa. She has said: ‘I think all artistic works are about identity, not just for artists from Africa or the Arab world. Identity is very much at the core of every artistic practice, be it painting flowers or exploring one’s culture or politics. Isn’t the personal political?’ (Sedira quoted in Furtado, 2023). Her oeuvre includes digital technologies, film, installations, object-making, photography, and video. Initially, she focused thematically on imagery relating to Muslim women and her own identity as a woman, using photographs of family members. The image of her mother wearing the haik in Algiers deeply influenced her. To this end, she made a video in 2002, Mother Tongue, presenting a multigenerational dialogue in French, English, and Arabic, featuring herself, her daughter, and her mother. Sedira bridged the communication gap that existed between her mother and her daughter, who do not share a common language. After a more autobiographical focus in her art, she began to explore themes of memory, movement, and transmission. Her practice also examines concepts of modernity and modernism, and its paradigm shifts towards greater inclusivity.

Sedira regularly exhibits internationally and in the UK. Early exhibitions included Zineb Sedira: Telling Stories with Differences held at the Cornerhouse, Manchester in 2004 and the two-person show, Becoming Independent: Amina Menia and Zineb Sedira (Dublin: Royal Hibernian Academy, 2013). In 2022, she represented France at the Venice Biennale. Turning the French Pavilion into a replica film studio, Sedira merged fiction with reality and interwove personal and shared histories. The exhibition explored the momentum behind creating activist films during the 1960s and 1970s, reflecting historical cultural collaborations across the Mediterranean. By using filmic techniques, such as remakes and mise en abyme, she drew from a variety of film styles. Sedira also spotlighted the 1964 film Les Mains Libres by Italian director Ennio Lorenzini, a pioneering Italian-Algerian production, restoring the film’s original reels. Sedira's presentation at the Biennale, as well as some of her exhibitions in Arab cities in Israel, have been subjects of controversy and debate within the art world. in 2023 she presented her solo show, Can’t You See the Sea Changing? at Dundee Contemporary Arts in Scotland followed by Dreams Have No Titles at London’s Whitechapel Gallery in 2024. For this immersive solo exhibition, she revisited the works and themes from the Biennale exhibition in a new space. More recent UK group shows have included Sixty Years, Tate Britain, London (2019), NOW5, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (2019) and We Are History (Somerset House, London, 2021).

Beyond exhibitions, Sedira has participated in different initiatives and received several awards. She established aria (an artist's residency programme in Algiers), which fosters the growth of Algeria's contemporary art through international exchanges and collaborations. In 2000, she received the Westminster Arts Council Film and Video Bursaries, and in 2004, she won the deciBel Visual Arts Award in recognition of a critically strong practice. In 2016 she was commissioned by Art on the Underground to create Underline: Collecting Lines at King’s Cross St Pancras, Euston, Highbury & Islington and Brixton stations. In 2021, she was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize, London, for her retrospective Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go, which opened at the Jeu de Paume, Paris, in 2019. Via archives, photographs, and installations, she has presented the theme of French-Algerian identity in terms of exile and belonging against the backdrop of the pan-African liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s.

Zineb Sedira lives in London and works between Algiers, London, and Paris. Her work is held several UK public collections, including the Arts Council Collection, Tate, V&A, and Wolverhampton Arts and Museums.