Zineb Sedira’s French winger emerges as an early favorite – ARTnews.com

It’s still too early to predict the winner of the Golden Lion for Best National Entry, one of the Venice Biennale’s top prizes, but it was clear earlier today that the French Pavilion had attracted a lot of interest during the early hours of the exhibition.

The pavilion hosts a new set of installations and a film by Zineb Sedira, the first artist of Algerian origin to represent the country. (Yasmina El Raqqad coordinated with duo Sam Bardawil and Till Fellrath.) Perhaps it is fitting that the Algerian independence movement in the 1960s formed the basis of her show titled Dreams Without Titles.

Sedira is particularly interested in the way aspects of Algerian culture have been represented in films, in works such as Battle of Algeria (1966) and libres les mens (1964/65). The first, drawn by Gillo Pontecorvo, gained just acclaim for its poignant depiction of the violence that Algerians resorted to in order to obtain liberation, but was banned in France for several years even after it was first released. The latter, by Ennio Lorenzini, is a lesser known documentary about the country of Algeria during that era. Sedira has been instrumental in the film’s recent restoration.

Both films appear in different works shown in this suite, most of which are series of installations that resemble sets of notable feature films. Inspired by a sequence from Luchino Visconti the stranger (1967), adapted from Albert Camus’s novel of the same name in which an Algerian religious worker finds himself increasingly isolated, Sedira installs a coffin in an exhibition. A three-point lighting system is already set up – it’s camera ready.

Historically, such works were intended to highlight the craft associated with cinema, the dream factory that marketed lies to its viewers. Sedira’s latest work contains traces of those sentiments, but is not sarcastic in its tone. If anything, they are happy.

It is very clear that the first installation that viewers see can be used as a group. It’s like an old school pub from the post-war era, and the crumbling music that would have been contemporary for that time is being broadcast. (The reference point here is the place from the 1983 movie Ettore Scola the ballWhich takes place in Paris bot.) Periodically, two performers – a man and a woman in black formal clothes – mingle among the visitors to the gallery, at one time actively dancing in front of everyone.

The booming mood is also felt in the film that gives the suite its name, which is shown in a theater designed to resemble an old movie theater, uncomfortable wooden chairs and all. In this essay film, Sedira reflects on the fine line between fact and fiction, and the potential editing potential of doing so.

At various points in this film, Sedira evokes forms of reconfiguration and re-creation that have been posed elsewhere with the suite. She has an actress imitating a clip from Battle of AlgeriaIt soon becomes unclear what the Sedira shots are and what the Pontecorvo shots are. She watches old movies on her computer and seems happy to do so. You arrange the miniatures based on sets in the movies you watch – and then, by some skillful editing trickery, seem to mix up those same little spaces.

Although it’s a research-oriented essay and narrative movie and all, it never dries out. If anything, it’s fairly powerful. Dreams have no titles He suggests that solidarity is a powerful thing – Latifah Eshakhsh and Sonia Boyce, who represent Switzerland and Great Britain at the Biennale, respectively, are among the cast. He also suggests that the reproductions may be unoriginal, but help us digest real-life events that are difficult to process. Rigad, the co-curator of the suite, appears in the film herself, pausing that producing artworks like Sedira’s is “a way of perseverance, a way of survival, a way of life” for people like her.

Sedira concludes the film on a positive note. As she plays Charles Wright’s “Express Yourself,” Sedira dances away. She kept appearing while the credits were rolling in.