Zineb Sedira: Floating Coffins, Saphir and MiddleSea
A multimedia feast of sound and video installations of the sea, from the award winning, internationally acclaimed French Algerian artist Zineb Sedira.
The sea is a significant part of the memories and psychology of many refugees and migrant workers who have arrived in Nottingham over the decades and here the artist presents three of her recent video and sound installations exploring the relationship between migration and the sea.
“As an ‘international artist’ I spend a lot of time in airports, ports and train stations. This has led me to become interested in the differences – both practical and theoretical – between various modes of transport and exploring ‘departures and arrivals”
- Zineb Sedira
Biography
Zineb Sedira was born in France to immigrant Algerian parents. She studied at St. Martin’s College and Slade School. She has exhibited internationally and was curated by the 2006 British Art Show and Africa Remix at the Hayward in 2005.
‘Floating Coffins’ is an installation incorporating 20 video screens, commissioned by the New Art Exchange and produced by Arts Admin. The commission explores a metaphor between ships left to rot along the coast of Mauritania and the escape from African citizens dreaming of a better future in Europe. The harbor city of Nouadhibou has recently become famous as the departure point for illegal migrants hoping to reach the Canary Islands. This metropolis is also Mauritania’s economic capital and home to the world’s largest ship graveyard: more than 200 trawlers of various origins, sunken or still afloat. All are damaged and slowly rotting under the sub-tropical sunshine.
“This unique phenomenon on the Saharan shores represent both a hazard to shipping and an ecological threat. Also, the sea becomes a space of ‘decline’ and an inactive landscape where lifeless ships and human bodies, can be found when rejected by the sea.
Like a fish net, the sand catches discarded goods displaced from their original home. Noxious waters and dying boats are vomiting intoxicated fishes and shattered objects. In this landscape, we can understand the scale of the ecological catastrophe in West Africa.” Zineb Sedira
Zineb Sedira now lives and works in London.
MiddleSea, shot in 2007, and was funded by the Arts Council of England and the Henry Moore Foundation, a High Definition single screen video installation.
MiddleSea explores the transitional nature of the sea and its shifting shores and borders .the work focu’ss on the MiddleSea, as a site of historical, cultural and contemporary ‘movement’ but also as a barrier and a divider between the South and North, the East and West.
“A metaphor for cultural crossovers, languages, translation and historical memories; a space where new voices, bodies and histories are encountered; a geo-political area that is a continual interweaving of cultural roots and historical routes. A site of antique civilisation and of contemporary tourism and migration.” Zineb Sadera
Saphir, created in 2006, and commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and the Photographer’s Gallery, London., is a High Definition two-screen video installation .
The exhibition contrasts Sedira's re-encounter with the sights and sounds of Algiers with an awareness that while she, like many 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.