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Zineb Sedira
zineb sedira, mother tongue (langue maternelle), 2002
"mother and i" (france), "daughter and i" (angleterre), "grandmother and i" (algérie)
installation vidéo, 5'06"
courtesy galerie kamel mennour, paris
Born in 1963 in Gennevilliers (France), she lives in London.
Of Algerian origin, Zineb Sedira grew up in France and currently lives in London. In her video Mother Tongue (2002) she takes a restrained, penetrating look at issues of education and intergenerational and inter-cultural relations. In this work, which takes the form of three monitors placed side by side, she presents three face-to-face confrontations between, respectively, herself and her mother, herself and her daughter, and her daughter and her mother. In the first two sequences, dialogue is achieved in spite of the different languages used by the protagonists (Arab and French, then French and English), but when grandmother and granddaughter come together the thread of communication is snapped, since neither knows the other’s language.