Identity and Positioning in Algerian and Franco-Algerian Contemporary Art Martin Elms A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of French Faculty of Arts and Humanities School of Languages and Cultures The University of Sheffield 13 December 2019 1 Abstract Identity and belonging increasingly feature as themes in the work of contemporary artists, a focus that seems particularly felt by those artists who either personally or through their families have experienced dispersal and migration. The thesis explores how fourteen Algerian and Franco-Algerian artists position themselves and are positioned by others to identity and community. The difficult intertwined histories of Algeria and France fraught with the consequences of colonisation, the impact of migration, and, in Algeria, civil war, provides a rich terrain for the exploration of identity formation. Positionality theory is used to analyse the process of identity formation in the artists and how this developed over the course of their careers and in their art. An important part of the analysis is concerned with how the artists positioned themselves consciously or inadvertently to fixed or fluid conceptions of identity and how this was reflected in their artworks. The thesis examines the complex politics of identity and belonging that extends beyond nationality and diaspora and implicates a range of other identifications including that of class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and career choice. The research addresses a gap in contemporary art scholarship by targeting a specific group of artists and their work and examining how they negotiate, in an increasingly globalised world, their relationship to identity including nationality and diaspora. The thesis foregrounds the ways in which this negotiation interacts with their careers, their art and the art market. The thesis begins with an outline of the methodological approach. Positioning to identity is then examined in the background, education, professional development and art of three international artists, Kader Attia, Adel Abdessemed and Saâdane Afif. Analysis then focuses on the artwork of the eleven remaining artists through the themes of history and memory, journey and narrative and gendered space. 2 Contents Acknowledgements …………………p. 5 Chapter One: Identity and Positioning in Algerian and Franco-Algerian Contemporary Art. • Introduction………………………………p. 6 • Selection of artists……………………….p. 6 • Research questions…………………………………………..…..p. 8 • Historical and cultural contexts of the thesis …………………………p. 9 • Methodology: positioning theory and the discourses of identity and community……………….p. 17 o Hybridity ………………………………………………………..p. 23 o Opacity………………………………………………………….p. 26 o Framing the art work and the artist…………………………..…p. 28 o Double Critique ………………………………………………..p. 29 • The chapters …………………………………………………………..p. 31 Chapter Two: Stars in the firmament. • Introduction ……………………………p. 33 • Radicants and Semionauts……………..p. 34 • Kader Attia ………………………...….p. 40 • Adel Abdessemed………………………p. 54 • Saâdane Afif .……………………….…p. 67 • Conclusion: Identity and Community….p. 76 Chapter Three: Re-imagining identity, past, present and future imperfect. • Introduction………………………..p. 80 • France…. p. 83 o Zoulikha Bouabdellah……..p. 85 o Mohamed Bourouissa……..p. 95 • Algeria……………………………..p. 105 o Amina Menia………………p. 107 o Responses to the events of the 1990s…….p. 116 o Ammar Bouras………….....p. 118 • Conclusion…………………………p. 124 Chapter Four: roots and routes in journeys, borders, and crossings. 3 • Introduction……………………………….p. 127 • Bruno Boudjelal: Jours intranquilles…….p. 129 o Algeria Act 1……………………..p. 133 o Algeria Act 2……………………..p. 145 • Zineb Sedira: Saphir……………………..p. 151 o Background to the film …….p. 152 o The return………………………..p. 153 • Zineddine Bessaï: H-OUT……………….p. 170 • Conclusion…..p. 176 Chapter Five: The female body and gendered spaces in contemporary Franco-Algerian art. • Introduction…………………p. 181 • Houria Niati…………………p. 185 • Samta Benyahia…………… p. 198 • Amina Zoubir……………….p. 213 • Katia Kameli………………..p. 225 • Conclusion: the female body, gendered space and identity and community… p. 236 Chapter Six: Conclusion…………. p. 239 Bibliography………………………p. 248 Appendix One: Images……………p. 288 4 Acknowledgements I owe a great deal of thanks to a number of people who have supported me during this research. First, I would like to thank the Department of French at the University of Sheffield, which has been an academic home for me for eight years. I am so grateful for the support, encouragement and friendship of my colleagues and to the Department for awarding me with the Marjorie Shaw Memorial Fund bursary for part of the period of the research. I am grateful to Amanda Crawley-Jackson for initially suggesting Algerian and Franco- Algerian contemporary art as a topic of research to consider. I have also been very lucky with my fantastic supervisors over the period of the research including Amanda Crawley-Jackson, Julia Dobson and Julia Banwell. I would particularly like to thank Julia Dobson for her astute comments on my work as it progressed and her unfailing patience, support and enthusiasm that has helped immensely during this undertaking. I must also acknowledge the wonderful practical support offered me by Claire Leavitt, Caroline Wordley and Ehsan Rashid in the professional services team. Finally, I would like to thank my beloved daughters, Eleanor Dupont and Sophie Maxwell and my darling granddaughter Nieve Dupont for their love and support. 5 Chapter One: Identity and Positioning in Algerian and Franco-Algerian Contemporary Art. Introduction The thesis arose from the writer’s long standing passion for contemporary art and an interest in how questions of identity and belonging increasingly feature in the work of contemporary artists. It was observed that this focus on identity seemed particularly felt by those artists who either personally or through their families have experienced dispersal and migration. The phenomenon appeared to reflect important changes occurring in a globalised world in which movement and displacement offer themselves as important signifiers related to identity and community. As Sheila Croucher notes ‘(t)he literature on globalization points to a world in flux and the politics of belonging is a central part of that flux’.1 The thesis approaches questions of identity and community as part of a wider phenomenon of a complex politics of identity and belonging that includes nationality and diaspora whilst implicating a range of other identifications including that of class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and career choice. The original suggestion that the thesis should be concerned with Algerian contemporary art was that of Dr. Amanda Crawley-Jackson who felt that it was an under-researched area. Initial examination of contemporary Algerian art confirmed that it was under-researched, and of great interest and relevance to the theme of identity and community. However, for reasons specific to Algerian culture and history outlined below, it was decided to extend the artists considered to include Franco-Algerian artists. Selection of artists It rapidly became apparent that there was no clear rationale for considering only artists born in Algeria. The contemporary art infrastructure of Algeria, both public and private, is very limited and there is a strong historic tendency for artists to leave the country and develop their art education and their careers outside its borders. As a result, it was important to represent the diversity of those born, living or working in Algeria and in France. The artists 1 Sheila Croucher, Globalization and Belonging: The Politics of Identity in a Changing World, (London: Rowman & Littlefield: 2018), p. 36. 6 selected are consequently a broad mix of both Algerians and Franco-Algerians and feature men and women currently living in a range of locations including Algeria, France, Germany and the UK. In total 14 artists were selected although not all are treated in the same depth. Three artists (Kader Attia, Adel Abdessemed, and Saâdane Afif) were chosen because of their international reputation in order to facilitate the study in Chapter Two of the role of identity and community in the route to career success in the art world and its markets. In addition, a number of artists were selected because of their engagement with key themes emerging as possible subjects for chapters: history and memory, the journey and movement and the female body and gendered space. These included well-established artists such as Mohamed Bourouissa, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Zineb Sedira, Bruno Boudjellal, Katia Kameli, Ammar Bouras, Samta Benyahia and Amina Menia. Houria Niati was added because she had played a role in developing the movement of British black women artists in the 1980s and 1990s and had made a particularly relevant, influential and historically significant artwork No to Torture (1982). Two younger artists, still in the early stages of their career but who had made significant work, were also included: Amina Zoubir and Zineddine Bessaï. Reluctantly there were some exclusions, for example, of Neïl Beloufa, this was partly due to scoping constraints and timings but also because of his situation as an ‘outlier’ in the USA and the inclusion of three other major international artists in Attia, Abdessemed and Afif. The artists selected vary in their formal approaches although to a great extent they rely on the dominant global contemporary forms of delivery