Many of the projects by Lydia Ourahmane (Saïda, Algeria, 1992) relate to her immediate surroundings and feature objects loaded with social, political and experiential meaning. She is interested in spirituality, contemporary geopolitics, migration and the complex histories of colonialism. Using video, sculpture, installation and sound, her work is expressed in a very distinctive language. Often in a large or even monumental format, it is invariably rooted in personal stories and experiences, whether individual or collective.
Hers is a praxis that says: How can the institutional structures and parameters that define contemporary societies be defied? How can vigilance and the impositions of bureaucracy be rejected? How can the mechanisms of state control be deactivated? How can artworks involve active and effective protests? Ourahmane manages to bring the personal into the political field and the domestic into the field of history.
