calendario eventi  :: 

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28/9/2006

Three exhibitions

The Photographers' Gallery, London

Zineb Sedira: Saphir

The Photographers’ Gallery will collaborate with Christine Van Assche, Chief Curator at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, to present two exhibitions.

This latest work by the London-based French/Algerian artist Zineb Sedira is a series of photographs and a two-screen video projection, shot in and around the port of Algiers.

The exhibition contrasts Sedira’s re-encounter with the sights and sounds of Algiers with an awareness that while she, like other people from France, is enjoying her return to the city, some of its other residents, disenchanted young men in particular, often dream of escape across the water to Europe.

The title Saphir (French for sapphire)
reflects this, evoking not only the pure maritime light typical of Algiers, but also those flickering glimmers
on the horizon that symbolise people’s dreams and aspirations. In Arabic, the word safir also
means ambassador — a person who travels between different places, the representative of one country on the soil of another.

This play of meaning is extended through two central characters. The first is an Algerian man who
walks across town, with no apparent purpose, and silently watches the daily ferries arrive and depart from the port. His image is counterpoised by that of an older woman — a daughter of the pieds noirs (a term for European settlers who left Algeria after its Independence). She inhabits the Safir Hotel, one of the grand landmarks of French colonial
Algiers. Whose imposing architecture is a powerful and resonant reminder of a past that still casts its light,
and shadow, over the city. Gazing out to sea from its balconies, before withdrawing to the faded grandeur of its lobbies and halls, the woman echoes the man’s movement and reinforces a wider sense of languor, inertia and enclosure.
Both characters circle within their own separate but parallel worlds, their paths often appear to intersect but without any conclusion.

Confronting the contemporary life of a city, Saphir presents a portrait of Algiers in a transitional moment,the local character gradually becoming absorbed into the current of increasing globalisation.

Saphir is commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and The Photographers’ Gallery.

Exhibition curated by Christine Van Assche, Senior Curator at the Centre Pompidou, Paris.

A catalogue Zineb Sedira: Saphir accompanies this exhibition with texts by Christine Van Assche, Richard Dyer and Elvan Zabunyan.

Exhibitions in association with Paris Calling: a season of contemporary art from France. Supported by Socie'te' Ge'ne'rale, Galerie Kamel Mennour, Black Moving Cube: Black
Figuration and the Moving Image, Visiting Arts and The Henry Moore Foundation.

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Cine'mathe'que de Tanger
Explorations in film & video

This exhibition transforms The Photographers’ Gallery into a trans-Arab video library showcasing video and film work produced, and unearthed, throughout the diverse and complex cultural, political and social space of the Arab world. A
world that now spans from Beirut to Paris to Los Angeles and back again.

Works are presented through monitors in the gallery space, as well as special Thursday late-night screenings and a series of events at Curzon Soho. The programme is loosely based around six sections - Coasts and Nomads; Territory: Urban Landscape and Peripheries; Here and Elsewhere; Pop Culture; A Little History Factory and Lover's Discourse: Fragments.

The 30 artists and filmmakers — young and established, formal and experimental - engage on many levels with the concept of ‘modernity’. They employ what Pasolini might term a ‘desperate vitality’ based not on nostalgia but a conception of a heterogeneous reality — referred to by him as ‘the force of the past’.

The films and videos are from the Cine'mathe'que de Tanger’s collection. Based in the old Cinema Rif building, it overlooks the Grand Socco, the historic central square where the old city (the medina) meets the new in Tangier, Morocco. As a new artist- run theatre for independent film and repertory cinema, talks and workshops, the Cine'mathe'que will also house a unique archive of contemporary, documentary and vernacular film work.

In addition, the exhibition includes documents, photographs and architectural drawings relating to the Cine'mathe'que, the city of Tangier and the state of movie theatres in Morocco.

Guest-curated by Cine'mathe'que de Tanger co-programmer and video artist Bouchra Khalili and CdT founder and photographer Yto Barrada. Exhibition programmed by Christine Van Assche, Senior Curator at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, and organised by The Photographers’Gallery in association with Paris Calling: The Festival of French Art.

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In Focus
TreeHouse Camera Obscura

TreeHouse Camera Obscura is the second in our In Focus series, an ongoing part of the exhibition programme at The Photographers' Gallery. In Focus links together, using a broad theme, the topics of the current exhibitions.

Artist Nilu Izadi and The Facility Architects have been working with Michael Faraday Primary School (Southwark) to build a camera obscura in the school's playground from a disused metal storage tank.

The TreeHouse Camera Obscura is a unique art object and a place for the children to play and explore. Teachers from the school will use it to explain the principles of light, photography and image making.

Nilu Izadi has been designing and building camera obscuras since 1995, including one for the rooftop of Cine'mathe'que de Tanger and another, in the form of a tent, with refugees of the Western Sahara living in Southern Algeria.

For information on public tours of the TreeHouse Camera Obscura please go to the Diary of Events


Image: Zineb Sedira, Photograph from project "Saphir" 2005 (c) Zineb Sedira

The Photographers’ Gallery
5 & 8 Great Newport Street
London WC2H 7HY
Nearest Tube: Leicester Square
Admission Free


Paris calling is a 6-month celebration of contemporary art from France held in more than 20 galleries, museums and art centres in and around London. Paris Calling is about putting the arts scenes of London and Paris in touch. Today geographically closer than ever, the two cities have very different approaches to the visual arts and collaborate little.
More info on http://www.pariscalling.org.uk

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