Algeria: The Enduring Power of Images
As part of the seminar “Forms of Resistance,” coordinated by Christian Joschke
With Émilie Goudal, 2022 recipient of the Institute’s Fellowship, and Djamel Tatah, painter and teacher.
Whether discreet, individual, or—on the contrary—coordinated by more or less radical projects to transform the world, acts of resistance no longer aim for a perfect, orderly world—one conceived ex nihilo in its social and material organization—but instead implement new ways of life in the shadow of political and financial powers, developing counter-hegemonic strategies to do so. The struggles for the climate, for women’s rights, for LGBTQIA+ rights, and for communities threatened by the destruction of their living environments are organizing, taking shape, and gaining visibility through resistance against the processes that threaten them.
Consequently, the role of contemporary creation—however essential it may be—is no longer to present a utopian vision of the future, but to act in the present to transform the world through resistance, the dissemination of imaginaries, and networked action. In social struggles, images in the broadest sense—photography and the visual arts, performances, stage productions, and film—play a part in the movement.
See you on Wednesday, November 16 with Émilie Goudal and Djamel Tatah.
Émilie Goudal
Émilie Goudal, an art historian, is an associate researcher at CEAC and a professor at the University of Lille. A 2022 recipient of the Institut pour la photographie grant, she is working on Agnès Varda’s photographic archive and is currently making a documentary film dedicated to the “Algerian series” by American artist Dennis Adams. She is the author of the book The Damned of History – Visual Arts and the Algerian War (Les Presses du réel, 2019) and several articles published in exhibition catalogs and journals such as Perspective , Art Critic , AWARE or Gradhiva .
Djamel Tatah
Born in France to Algerian parents, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Saint-Étienne in the 1980s before embarking on an international career. His work is featured in international institutions (the Guangdong Museum in Guangzhou, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Algiers, the Pompidou Center in Málaga) as well as in private collections and foundations (the Maeght Foundation in Saint-Paul-de-Vence; the Lambert Collection in Avignon; Art Barjeel Foundation, Sharjah). In France, major exhibitions have been dedicated to him, notably at the Saint-Étienne Museum of Modern Art in 2014. He will present his recent works at the Musée Fabre in Montpellier in December 2022 and will be featured at the Musée Matisse in Nice in early 2024.