Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go

The Franco-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira (Paris, 1963) has been addressing in her work themes around migration, memory and transmission, combining collective and personal narratives, at times autobiographical, questioning the bias of official histories.

For this exhibition, Sedira returns to the themes of art and resistance (and revolution), starting from an investigation into the Pan-African Festival of Algiers (PANAF) in 1969, organised by the new Algerian state, independent since 1962. Its capital, Algiers, was emerging as a place of ‘revolutionary’ encounters for many of the global liberation movements and the militancies and utopias of the 1960s and 70s. 

The title of the exhibition, Standing Here Wondering Which Way to Go, is borrowed from a song performed by the African-American gospel singer Marion Williams at the PANAF, an extensive cultural and political event, celebrating African unity, affirming culture as a revolutionary weapon of resistance to domination, and a powerful expression of hope for change in the world.

The installation is structured in four ‘Scenes’: the mise-en-scène video, made with found negatives from militant films; the series of photomontages and objects entitled For a Brief Moment the World Was on Fire…; the diorama Way of Life, which re-stages Sedira’s sixties style living room in London, in real size; and her collection of vinyl records of militant songs We Have Come Back. 

Echoing the spirit of hospitality from the PANAF, Sedira brings to the exhibition a group of works by William Klein, Jason Oddy, Nabil Djedouani and unknown Algerian photographers such as a selection of photographs by Boubaker Adjali, taken in Angola and Mozambique in 1970. In Tabakalera, a set of materials is added that engage with the Spanish historical background through two case studies: Equatorial Guinea and the Canary Islands.