Apply by Sunday 27 April to attend our free art-writing course, in collaboration with Liverpool Biennial and supported by Frieze membership. A curatorial research trip became a profound reckoning with resistance, anti-colonialism and the power of art.
Last year, I returned to Algiers for the first time in almost two decades. Instigated as a curatorial research trip, the visit ultimately evolved into a deeply personal journey.
France annexed Algeria in , with the country only regaining independence in Four years later, in , Baya became the only female signatory of the Manifesto of Aouchem, a postcolonial artistic collective that took its name from the Indigenous Amazigh practices of body art. Members of Aouchem sought to ground their work in visual heritages they believed had evolved from the prehistoric cave paintings of the Tassili Mountains.
Over her decades-long career, Baya depicted solely women, often portraying them within lush floral gardens as protagonists in their own worlds and incorporating Kabyle motifs. Having lost both parents at a young age, Baya was raised by her grandmother whilst working on a colonial flower farm, before being taken in by Marguerite Caminat, a French woman residing in Algiers.
Issiakhem himself became an emblem of resistance after enduring great personal trauma. At 15, he suffered a life-altering accident: believing a grenade left behind by soldiers was inactive, he brought it home, resulting in a devastating explosion that claimed the lives of his two younger sisters and a nephew, and cost him one of his arms. This traumatic event had a lasting impact on his life and deeply influenced his artistic expression.
