ART-PRESENTATION: Zineb Sedira-Laughter in Hell

Despite the considerable attention in recent years to Islamist movements in the Middle East and North Africa, the situation in Algeria often goes overlooked. Most discussions on the subject begin and end with the “first” Arab uprisings. These reference the rise and fall of Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) party between 1988 and 1992, Algeria’s descent into a harrowing civil war (sometimes called the “Black Decade”) after they were stripped of power.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie kamel menniour Archive

Through humor, Algerians have been able to talk about and denunciate the most unspeakable of events. Zineb Sedira in her solo exhibition “Laughter in Hell” addresses the psychological, philosophical and political dimensions of jokes and the tropes of irony and parody as a subversive mode of communication during Algeria’s “Black Decade” during which the government fought a brutal internal war against Islamist insurgency. “Laughter in Hell” is a cultural research and installation project that explores black humor as a form of resistance used by civilians to escape everyday violence. The traumatic period that started in the late 1980s with countrywide street protests was followed a few years later by a military intervention that forestalled the electoral victory of the Islamist Salvation Front (FIS) and removed the sitting president. Throughout the 1990s, Algeria was then mired in a violent internal war between armed Islamist groups and the Algerian army that resulted in the death of about 200,000 civilians. Whilst these events are little known internationally and unwillingly discussed within Algeria, Zineb Sedira audaciously recounts this dramatic chapter of contemporary Algerian history through the lens of humour, used as a constitutive element of both resilience and resistance. Viewers will learn about and understand the (unfamiliar) ‘Black Decade’ through the display of humour and hopefully, this will provoke laughter. Intentionally presented as a miniature museum immortalising the dark, gallows humour of the “Black Decade”, the installation “Laughter in Hell” (2014-2018) comprises the archive Zineb Sedira has researched and built over several years. Here we discover rare publications dedicated to caricatures by renowned and tireless cartoonists such as Slim, Ali Dilem, Gyps, Hic or Maz displayed in cabinets. There, viewers are confronted by to large poster reproductions of political cartoons initially published in newspapers such as El Watan, El Khabar or Liberté, as well as original and newly commissioned panel pages by Gyps and Dahmani. Two recent video interviews with historian Dr Elisabeth Perego and journalist and writer Mustapha Benfodil complete this personal anthology of black humour.

Info: Galerie kamel menniour, 6 rue du Pont de Lodi, Paris, Duration 30/11/18-12/1/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.kamelmennour.com