Lydia Ourahmane
Lydia Ourahmane is an artist currently based in Barcelona and Algiers. Many of her projects relate to her immediate surroundings and feature objects loaded with social, political and experiential meaning. She is interested in spirituality, contemporary geopolitics, migration and the complex histories of colonialism. Using video, sculpture, installation and sound, her work is expressed in a very distinctive language. Often using a large or even monumental format, it is invariably rooted in personal stories and experiences, whether individual or collective. Hers is a praxis that asks: How can the institutional structures and parameters that define contemporary societies be defied? How can vigilance and the impositions of bureaucracy be rejected? How can the mechanisms of state control be deactivated? How can artworks involve active and effective protests? Ourahmane manages to bring the personal into the political field and the domestic into the field of history.
Recent solo exhibitions include: sync, KW Institute of Contemporary Art, Berlin; Vendesi, Progetto, Lecce; Tassili, SculptureCenter, New York; Mercer Union, Toronto; rhizome, Algiers; B7L9 Art Station, Tunis, and Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris (2022–23); Survival in the Afterlife, Portikus, Frankfurt, and De Appel, Amsterdam (2021–22); Barzakh, Kunsthalle Basel, Triangle–Astérides, Marseille, and S.M.A.K., Ghent (2021–22); صرخة شمسية Solar Cry, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2020); and The you in us, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2018), among others. Her work was included in the 34th São Paulo Biennial (2021), Manifesta 12, Palermo (2018), the New Museum Triennial (2018) and the 15th Istanbul Biennial (2017).
Selected group exhibitions include: Home Sweet Home, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Risquons-Tout, WIELS, Brussels; and Laws of Confusion, Renaissance Society, Chicago (both with Alex Ayed); Waiting for Omar Gatlato: A Survey of Algerian Contemporary Art, Le Magasin, Grenoble (2023).
