TASSILI

Artist: Lydia Ourahmane

Curator : Karim Sultan

Date: From March 16^th to May 20th  

Venue: the B7L9 art station - Bhar Lazreg, Tunis, Tunisia.  

After-movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lHbqGhmpf4&ab_channel=B7L9ArtStation

The Kamel Lazaar Foundation is delighted to present Tassili, the first solo exhibition by artist Lydia Ourahmane in Tunisia. This exhibition will be the final destination in an international touring presentation that has included New York, Nottingham, Paris, Algiers, and Tunis. 

Encompassing a single moving image work, Tassili is the result of a collaboration between the artist and a group that included fellow artists, musicians, and filmmakers. 

Tassili n’Ajjer, a significant land located in the southeast of Algeria, is both the setting and the central protagonist of the work. It is home to thousands of prehistoric engravings, rock and cave paintings, and geological formations that demonstrate the long history of human settlement and expression in an area, as well as the massive ecological shifts that have happened since the earliest traces of its inhabitants thousands of years prior. 

Ourahmane’s work offers a sustained meditation on this landscape, allowing reflection on what it means to travel to a place, document it, and create a work of art from it. This is particularly the case with a land as fraught with historical and ongoing dynamics of colonialism, heritage, territorial claims, and identity as Tassili n’Ajjer. 

This exhibition will be accompanied by a public programme that will include musical performances, talks, and workshops. Lydia Ourahmane’s new moving image work Tassili, 2022, is commissioned and produced by SculptureCenter, New York; rhizome - ريزوم, Algiers; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunis; Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art, Toronto; and Nottingham Contemporary.