This catalogue offers diverse representations of everyday life in
Algeria
and its diaspora through film, paintings, photography and sculpture by
twenty-five contemporary artists. It includes the first English translations
of key theoretical texts on Algerian contemporary art.
Artists who belong to Algeria are caught between a national mythology that
does not represent them and a historical space blanked out by
state-sanctioned amnesia on both sides of the Mediterranean.
Waiting for
Omar Gatlato:A Survey of Contemporary Art from Algeria and Its Diaspora
presents the work of twenty-five such artists who offer diverse
representations of everyday life and are rigorously critical in their
engagement with the legacies of Orientalist figuration, modernist
abstraction, monumental
public
art,
Conceptual art,
and postmodern
media theory
after 1962, in a postindependence context.
This publication includes the first English translations of
texts by key theorists of contemporary art in Algeria on the evolving
relationship between art and politics, as well as poetry by Samira Negrouche
and a graphic essay by Nawel Louerrad. The book's title comes from an essay
by Wassyla Tamzali on Merzak Allouache's 1977 film
Omar Gatlato.
With artworks by Louisa Babari, Fayçal Baghriche, Bardi, Mouna Bennamani,
Adel Bentounsi, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Halida Boughriet, Fatima Chafaa, EL
Meya, Hakima El Djoudi, Karim Ghelloussi, Mounir Gouri, Mourad Krinah, Nawel
Louerrad, Amina Menia, Sonia Merabet, Yazid Oulab, Lydia Ourahmane, Sadek
Rahim, Dania Reymond, Sara Sadik, Fethi Sahraoui, Massinissa Selmani, Fella
Tamzali Tahari,
Djamel Tatah, Sofiane
Zouggar.
Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at the Miriam and Ira
D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University in the City of New York, from
October 26, 2019, to March 15, 2020.
