Katia Kameli -Yesterday is returning and I can hear it

Exhibition from January 19th to April 16th, 2023.
An exhi­bi­tion at Bétonsalon –Center for Art and Research and ICI - Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris

Katia Kameli, Image still from the Algerian Novel - Chapter I, 2016 © Adagp, Paris, 2023 / Katia Kameli

Curated by: Émilie Renard for Bétonsalon and Bérénice Saliou for ICI.

Since the begin­ning of the 2000s, artist, director, pro­ducer and teacher Katia Kameli has been devel­oping a dense and mul­ti­faceted body of work. Grounded in two cul­tures - French and Algerian - she ques­tions the blind spots of his­tory, taking up the role of an inter­me­diary between dif­ferent ter­ri­to­ries. Following the paths she her­self has chosen, she makes con­nec­tions between dis­tant facts, repairs broken rela­tion­ships and ensures the voices of those who have been ignored are heard. In so doing, she writes a counter-nar­ra­tive in which her dif­ferent sub­jects of research mingle and com­bine to weave together a mul­ti­tude of per­spec­tives. Kameli’s art lies at the cross­roads of poetry, visual studies and arti­sanal tech­niques. It is the fruit of a con­struc­tion of rela­tion­ships, rela­tions that are built out of affinity, prox­imity and friend­ship. Her first solo show in these two Parisian cul­tural insti­tu­tions brings together an ensemble that includes existing works and her new pro­duc­tion.

The exhi­bi­tion at ICI puts her cre­ations of the last 20 years under the spot­light. It show­cases a con­sis­tent approach in which nar­ra­tives cir­cu­late and are trans­formed, trans­posed and super­posed across dif­ferent places and times. In the exhi­bi­tion, Kameli takes on the role of a trans­lator: her photos, videos, draw­ings and instal­la­tions bring into play a formal and con­cep­tual lan­guage that comes together in an in-between space sit­u­ated between dif­ferent lan­guages, sounds, aes­thetics and cul­tures. Le Cantique des oiseaux [The Canticle of the Birds], a pro­ject co-pro­duced by La Criée, Centre for con­tem­po­rary art in Rennes includes a video she filmed in the Goutte d’Or neigh­bour­hood of Paris in part­ner­ship with the Conservatoire du 18e – Gustave Charpentier. Stream of Stories, a work that addresses the theme of meta­mor­phosis in Kalîla wa Dimna, the fables that inspired Jean de La Fontaine, is enhanced by a tufted tapestry designed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with tex­tile artist Manon Daviet.

The exhi­bi­tion at Bétonsalon is organ­ised around the Roman algérien; it pre­sents the three videos that com­prise the latter (shot between 2016 and 2019) and reveals Kameli’s research for a fourth chapter that takes as its starting point La Nouba des femmes du mont Chenoua [The Nubah of the Women of Mount Chenoua], a film directed by the Algerian film­maker and nov­elist Assia Djebar in 1977. By basing itself on the first Algerian film directed by a woman (copies of which still cir­cu­late today), Kameli seems to be con­tin­uing the work of Djebar, who looked back at the sto­ries of women in the resis­tance during the war for inde­pen­dence in the town and moun­tains of Cherchell. By col­lecting accounts from women of dif­ferent gen­er­a­tions, she com­poses a poly­phonic, living nar­ra­tive in which per­sonal and col­lec­tive sto­ries are made audible amidst the com­plex­i­ties of a colo­nial past.

The title of the exhi­bi­tion, “Yes­terday is returning and I can hear it“, comes from Women of Algiers in Their Apartments, a 1980 novel by Assia Djebar.

Katia Kameli, The Algerian Novel - Chapter I, 2016 © Adagp, Paris, 2023 / Katia Kameli