Image Keepers

Join artist Zineb Sedira as she presents excerpts from her two-part film on a photographic archive documenting the Algerian war of independence and beyond. The film ‘Image Keepers‘ is centred around Safia Kouaci, the widow of Mohammed Kouaci, one of the only Algerian photographers to have closely followed the Algerian revolution, the independence in 1962 and the aftermath. His widow Safia is the keepers of his archives and Sedira was struck by her personality, by her knowledge, by her love for her husband and by her involvement in the revolution as a freedom fighter. She was also struck by the ‘new way’ Algerian history was portrayed, not told by the former leaders but by the voices of regular people. She describes the film to be ‘about ageing and solitude, something we will all face’.

Zineb Sedira will be in conversation with Vassilis Oikonomopoulos and together they will discuss Sedira’s work as well as talk more broadly on the archival images that document Algeria’s struggle for independence.

Zineb Sedira is an Algerian artist who combines installations, photography, film and video to raise awareness of artistic expressions and contemporary experiences in Algeria, and the Maghreb region more generally. Using portraits, landscapes, language and archival research, she has developed a polyphonic vocabulary which spans fiction, documentary as well as poetic and lyrical approaches. In her recent work, Sedira’s focus has shifted from autobiographical concerns to explorations of ideas of mobility, memory transmission and geographic issues. Sedira is the founder and director of Aria, an artist residency in Algiers.

Vassilis Oikonomopoulos is an assistant curator, Collections International Art at Tate Modern, London where he focuses primarily on developing Tate’s collection holdings from the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to this, Vassilis has held curatorial positions in organisations and institutions internationally, such as Atopos Cultural Organisation, Athens, Greece and OMA/AMO – Office for Metropolitan Architecture/Rem Koolhaas, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

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