Made in Algeria: Mapping layers of colonial memory into contemporary visual art

Abstract

In 2016, the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée in Marseille hosted the ‘Made in Algeria: Généalogie d’un territoire’ exhibition which gathered cartographic depictions of Algeria from the earliest European encounters to modern images of an independent culture still bearing colonial remnants. The contemporary pieces, notably by Franco-Algerian artists Zineb Sedira and Katia Kameli, expose multiple layers of the past as they reformulate what had been erased by colonisation and what had been silenced by the subsequent ruptures of independence. Their images, like the artists who have migrated back and forth between Algeria and France across time, show accumulated layers of colonial memory enmeshed in contemporary images of the Algerian people and landscape. By assessing the marks still visibly mapped onto Algeria in the exhibition, this article explores how what is ‘Made in Algeria’ remains heavily marked by France.