Press Release

Between postcolonialism, exoticism and integration: the practices of artists with immigrant backgrounds. With Adel Badessemed (artist) and Zahia Rahmani (writer)
Debate (2/6)
Tuesday 16 March 2004

Adel Abdessemed
Born in 1971 in Constantine (Algeria), he left Algeria in 1994 and continued his studies in Lyon (1994-98) and then in Paris (1999-2000). He then spent several months in New York (International Studio Program, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Centre) before moving to Berlin, where he has lived since 2002.
Working with video, drawing, photography and writing, he often uses lived experiences to deal with the questions of constraints due to cultural, political or spiritual identities in Western and Islamic societies, or where these two types are mixed together.

Zahia Ramani
Born in Algeria in 1962, she is an art historian with responsibility for visual arts in the Art and Globalisation programme at the INHA (Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art). Her first novel, Moze (Editions Sabine Wespieser, 2003) explores the figure of the father, taking as its starting point the suicide of her own father, a harki (Algerian who fought for the French during the Algerian war of independence): a man with no community and no country to go back to.