Lydia Ourahmane. Barzakh

21.May.2022 – 18.Sep.2022

Lydia Ourahmane. Barzakh

The artistic projects of Lydia Ourahmane (b.1992, Saïda, Algeria) often depart from events in her personal surroundings or from objects that carry a tension due to their social, political or economic significance. These objects provide the impetus for an in-depth examination of the way in which repeated histories of forced displacement and colonial oppression inscribe themselves upon individual lives, bodies and structures. The actual work takes the form of a video, performance, sculpture, sound piece or installation and is often has an experimental character.

The Arabic word ‘barzakh’ means ‘to be in limbo’, an ‘in-between state’ between life and death, the place where the spirits hide but also a physical location that offers protection. For this project, Ourahmane moved the entire contents of her flat in Algiers to Europe during the 2020 lockdown. Prevented from returning to Algeria due to an on-going artist’s residency, she made her ‘home’ come to her and transformed it into an installation. It was given the same surface area and layout as her original living space. In the exhibition, the artist’s interventions and unique circumstances ensure that the contents are transformed into an extremely complex, fragile environment, which releases its meanings slowly and in unexpected ways.

‘Barzakh’ was commissioned by Kunsthalle Basel and is a co-production of Kunsthalle Basel and @Triangle-Astérides, Centre d’art contemporain, Marseille. S.M.A.K. is the third stage of a journey that has taken ‘Barzakh’ from Basel to Marseille and Ghent.