Zineb Sedira is representing France at the 59th Venice International Art Biennale in 2022. 

Three countries have influenced the career of Zineb Sedira: France, where she was born and grew up; Algeria, where her parents came from; and England, where she lives. Like her emblematic cinematic installation Mother Tongue, created in 2002, her personal and artistic journey embodies a complex mapping of Europe and Africa. 

With her curators, Yasmina Reggad, Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, Zineb Sedira transforms the French Pavilion into a cinematographic installation. 

In Dreams Have No Titles, the artist addresses a major turning point in the history of cultural, intellectual and avant-garde production of the 1960s, 1970s and beyond, in France, Italy and Algeria especially. She focuses on a repertoire of remarkable cinematographic co-productions and filmmaking, in particular activist ones, which had an impact on postcolonial movements.

In line with her practice to date, Sedira uses autobiographical narrative, fiction and documentary to shed light on past and present international solidarities related to historical liberation struggles. Her contribution serves as a cautionary tale about the failure of an emancipatory promise which, for many people, remains an unfulfilled, not to say an impossible dream. 

During several visits to the archives of the Algerian Cinémathèque, she continued to mine the country’s incredible film heritage, which hardly ever gets a mention in the history of the cinematographic avant-gardes. 

Post-independence cinema in France, Italy and Algeria adhered to the so-called “Third-World” values and aesthetics, which amounted to a true revolution on the big screen. 

Throughout her life, Zineb Sedira felt close to this militant and anti-colonial movement inspired by the Cuban model, showing a political courage that she considers to be an important manifestation of solidarity at that time, and which she hopes to reactivate today.