Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art Presents 'VOICE-OVER: Zineb Sedira'

Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA) brings to Scottsdale London-based artist Zineb Sedira, who will represent France in the 2022 Venice Biennale, with "VOICE-OVER: Zineb Sedira" on view Feb. 20 - Sept. 5, 2021.

"Representing one's country at the Venice Biennale is a tremendous honor for any artist," said Jennifer McCabe, director and chief curator at SMoCA. "And as the first artist of African descent to represent France, the recognition is particularly significant."

In her solo-exhibition "VOICE-OVER," Sedira will premiere her work "Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go" in the United States. This installation was first shown in 2019 at the Jeu de Paume in Paris as part of the exhibition "A Brief Moment." This new iteration of the installation is being created specifically for SMoCA. This work is inspired by the 1969 Pan-African Festival of Algiers - a key historical event that marked Algeria's important role in various liberation movements in Africa along with the global 1960s political, anti-imperialist, post-colonialist and utopian consciousness - as well as the eponymous William Klein documentary film of the same year.

The installation is composed of four "scenes" echoing cinema, theater and music festival stages. The work's central element, titled "Way of Life," is a life-sized diorama that recreates the artist's own living room in London. Other scenes in "Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go" explore the sense of utopia and resistance that accompanied the Pan-African Festival in 1969 through various media, including "Mise-en-scène" a film filled with archival footage of Algerian militant films, and "For a Brief Moment the World was on Fire" and "We Have Come Back," each composed of photomontages of countercultural images.

"Zineb Sedira's work is personal and political. Although her work is most often based in the investigation of her own identity and history in relationship to the African diaspora, it remains universal. Sedira creates work with expansive themes around memory, migration and the archive. Posing important questions on the relation between history and aesthetics, trauma and form, Sedira has established herself as a significant voice in a global contemporary artworld conversation," said Natasha Boas, curator or "VOICE-OVER."

On view will be several of Sedira's videos, which focus on her interest in intergenerational oral histories and colonialism - how stories are collected, recorded and transmitted - paying particular tribute to her parents' native country, Algeria. One of the videos on view, "Mother Tongue" (2002), raises the issue of transmission in a globalized world. The video features three generations of women discussing their childhood in their native languages - the artist in French, her mother in Arabic and her daughter in English - until communication breaks down between daughter and grandmother, who have no language in common. Also being shown are "The End of the Road" (2010), "Tracing a Territory" (2016) and "Inconsistent Mapping" (2017). Sedira employs her own voice-over in the videos as a radical device that disrupts conventions of documentary.

This exhibition will also include works by Gordon Parks and Emory Douglas that highlight the United States-based Black Panther connection to Algeria.

"VOICE-OVER: Zineb Sedira" is organized by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and guest curated by Natasha Boas, Ph.D. Supported by the Walter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation.

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