The power of myth and image
What does it mean to be a woman in Algeria? This question has followed artist Amina Zoubir throughout her upbringing in the country, evolving into an essential orientation of her art through video, performance in the public space, sculptures, drawings and installations. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, she witnessed a violent period of civil war between the government and various Islamic groups, which changed society and its public sphere. A war in which Algerian women played different roles, while the legacy of a long and brutal colonial history with France continued to foster a misogynist society. Social and gender issues in contemporary Algerian society are therefore closely linked to post-colonial issues.
Over the last few centuries, the Arab invasion and France's colonial policy have contributed to a specific male gaze on Algerian women, which was accentuated in the torn and unequal society of the 1900s. This view deeply wounded the people and marginalised the natives of Algeria, the Amazigh or Berbers, as they had been called since the Roman conquest. Women, in particular, faced a double oppression, both by colonial power and by the patriarchal structure. Certain war strategies also explicitly targeted them by controlling societal reforms such as marriage and by physically and mentally violating them. Postcards showing un-veiled (literally) Berber women, photographed topless, are a colonial trace in today's visual culture. They are depicted both as exoticised objects of desire and as women emancipated to promote French ideals. The aim was to destroy the image of the sacred female figure and to dominate Algerian men.
The exhibition Amina Zoubir Takes a Stand on Berber Queens: History and Mythology, part of Ernest Mancoba's wider exhibition at Södertälje konsthall, is Amina Zoubir's first solo exhibition in Sweden. It presents the latest chapter in her ongoing exploration of female representation and women's history in North Africa through colonial imagery and the images of the Berber queens Tin Hinan (4th century), Kahina Dihya (7th century) and Lalla N'Soumer (1830-63). These were queens who ruled matriarchal societies in the Maghreb but whose history has been neglected in Algerian school education. Lalla N'Soumer, for example, was a key figure in the resistance movement against the French colonial invasion. Tin Hinan crossed the Sahara desert on foot to escape Roman oppression. Kahina Dihya was beheaded for her influence as she led troops against the Arab invasion. So what role can these postcards and the imagery of Berber queens play today, and how have these images been incorporated into contemporary representations of the female body?
In Zoubir's work, she deals with the destructive history contained in colonial images by repeatedly drawing the women on the postcards in life-size. In return, she gives substance to oral accounts of Berber queens by sculpting the feet of Tin Hinan and the confident face of Kahina Dihya, embodying their strength and materialising their presence. At the same time, she deconstructs a collection of original colonial postcards by cutting them up into small pieces and assembling them in new forms, revealing the fragility of their earlier erotic concept. His methods are reminiscent of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze's (Deleuze, 1968) concept of 'difference' and 'repetition', a critique of representation. For Deleuze, each repetition produces something unique. It is also what lies between difference and repetition that explains change, evolution and creativity.
n contrast to the collages, Zoubir's wallpaper is at first sight a simple systematic repetition of a mirror image of the warrior Lalla N'Soumer in combat position, with a rifle.
However, the mirror effect causes the two pointed barrels of the rifles to meet, causing the force of the weapons to implode. It is as if the artist is trying to test both the potential and the incapacity of such images today. In her work, using the idea of repetition, Zoubir highlights a familiar dichotomy: women as prostitutes (colonial postcards) and as heroic figures (Berber queens) - 'revealing' them as women, that is, as human beings - at the same time as revealing them as myths. Deleuze asserts, by declaring the essential logic and metaphysical aspects of 'repetition' and 'difference' prior to any concept of identity, that 'identity and resemblance would then be elements of identity and difference': 'Identity and resemblance would then be no more than inevitable illusions, that is to say, concepts of reflection that would account for our inveterate habit of thinking difference in terms of the categories of representation.
Zoubir's previous work, such as the performance series Prends ta Place - Take Your Place (2012) made in Algiers in Moorish coffee lounges, streets, football stadiums, beaches, hairdressing salons and clothes markets, as well as his exploration of female representation in North Africa, show a fundamental need for reliable images of women living in the country today and for a female presence in public space. It makes me think of what the psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon, who supported the Algerian War of Independence, once wrote: "In the world I live in, I am constantly creating myself" (Fanon, 1952). For me, he underlines the complexity and fundamental nature of the impact of society on the physical body and the psyche. For Ernest Mancoba, (African) artists must identify what they need to pass on to future generations, because he saw art as an extension of humanity. Zoubir makes us aware of the need to take a distanced look at established imagery and women's myths, in order to open the way to stimulating alternative concepts through art.
Text by Sara Rossling, independent curator and writer.
View of Amina Zoubir taking a stance on berber queens: history and mythology at Södertälje Konsthall, 2020.
Amina Zoubir, Forgotten figure #Kahena, 2014. White plaster sculpture, 22 x 14 x 10 cm.
© Amina Zoubir, ADAGP Paris.
