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Installation view of Voice-Over: Zineb Sedira 1

Zineb Sedira 

Voice-Over: Zineb Sedira

May 8, 2021 - Jan 30, 2022

In her solo-exhibition Voice-Over, Sedira creates a new iteration for SMoCA of Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go, an installation first shown at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 2019. Zineb Sedira will be the first artist of African descent to represent France at the 2022 Venice Biennale.

About

London-based French born Algerian artist Zineb Sedira has been mining her relationship to memory, post-coloniality, and transnational identity in her artistic practice for over 25 years. Born in Paris in 1963 to Algerian immigrant parents and raised in what is considered the “racial other” suburbs (banlieus) of Paris, Sedira went on to graduate from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and the Slade School of Art in London, where she was influenced by Stuart Hall, British cultural studies, and the Black Arts Movement.

Sedira’s work conveys the political through the personal, deploying multiple storytelling tactics and voices. Using photography, video, archival films, and recorded interviews, she unpacks issues such as the silenced cultural history of Algeria and her heritage inscribed within the French colonialization of Algeria, her parents’ homeland. By questioning the relation between history and aesthetics, trauma and form, Sedira has established herself as a significant voice in the global contemporary artworld. She will be the first artist of African descent to represent France at the 2022 Venice Biennale.

Voice-Over is organized in two parts. In the larger gallery, Sedira creates a new iteration of the installation Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go based on the Pan-African Festival of 1969 and the documentary by William Klein of the same year. This four-part installation was first shown in 2019 at the Jeu de Paume in Paris and commissioned by Jeu de Paume, Paris, France; IVAM, Valencia, Spain; Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal; and Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden.

The second gallery features two of Sedira’s seminal videos. Mother Tongue (2002) is an early foundational work that speaks directly to the practices of oral transmission and marginalized storytelling, and to the concept of memory as a way of representing diasporic identity across generations and cultures. In The End of the World (2010), the artist employs her signature voice-over technique as a radical device which disrupts the conventions of documentary. Here she elaborates both literally and symbolically on other preoccupations of her practice: the environmental costs of globalization, issues around cultural archives, and displacement.

Organized by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and guest curated by Dr. Natasha Boas, a French American international independent curator, scholar, and critic based in San Francisco and Paris. The exhibition is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Walter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation, the Institut Français and the Consulate General of France in Los Angeles. Special thanks to Stinkweeds Record Store, Phoenix, and Alyshaan Fine Rugs, Scottsdale.

 

Title Partners:

The official Logo for the Andy Warhol Foundation for the visual arts   

Related Events

Virtual Artist Talk: Zineb Sedira

Thursday, May 6, 6 p.m. (MST/AZ)

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Virtual Film Screening: William Klein’s Algiers Pan-African Festival

Friday, May 7-9

Learn More.

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Artist Talk

Publication

Voice-Over: Zineb Sedira catalog is a detail record of Sedira’s first solo exhibition in the United States. Using photography, video, archival films, and recorded interviews from installations from 2019 and 2020, she unpacks issues such as the silenced cultural history of Algeria and her heritage inscribed within the French colonialization of Algeria—her parents’ homeland.

Learn More

Press

Related Press Releases

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Presented ‘Voice-Over: Zineb Sedira’ On View May 8, 2021 – Jan. 30, 2022

Four Original Solo Exhibitions Opening in 2021 at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art


Zineb Sedira in the press

Voice-Over: Zineb Sedira reviewed in Southwest Contemporary Vol. 3, July 30, 2021.

Arizona PBS Horizon interviewed guest curator Natasha Boas about Voice-Over: Zineb Sedira.

Southwest Contemporary included Voice-Over: Zineb Sedira in “Your Weekly 5×5: May 6, 2021.”

The Arizona Republic mentioned Voice-Over: Zineb Sedira in “From outdoor stages to new museum exhibitions, here are Phoenix area arts highlights for March.”

New art for the new year: Metro Phoenix museums, galleries have exciting shows scheduled on Arizona Republic, Dec. 16, 2020.

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