12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

Ammar Bouras lives and works in Algiers, DZ

The artist Ammar Bouras, born two years after his country’s liberation from France, has said, “I didn’t live through the war; I’m a product of Algerian independence.” Consequently, Bouras has developed an extensive body of work that critically examines history and memory, while probing the political situation in Algeria.

The 12th Berlin Biennale presents his installation 24°3′55″N 5°3′23″E (2012/2017/2022), composed of photographs and a video. The title refers to the coordinates of the so-called Béryl incident, an explosion that occurred on May 1, 1962 while the French carried out underground nuclear tests near In Ekker in the Algerian desert. The artist’s focus on the silent cataclysm of the Béryl explosion aims to reveal the responsibility of the French and Algerian states and the influence of humans on the spaces they denature. His photographic mosaic of the granite Taourirt Tan Afella mountain reconstitutes it from different time periods and angles, demonstrating that history is not composed of a single fragment of an event but of many fragments of individual and collective memories, rearranged using the technique of montage. Through resonances and reverberations, his installation questions images and their ability to represent historical facts. After sixty years of independence, history remains unresolved.

Karima Boudou

Exhibitions

Un œil ouvert sur le monde arabe, 2018, Institut du monde arabe, Paris (FR)

Vu d’Alger, 2018, Galerie Richard, Paris (FR)

Le noir et le bleu, un rêve méditerranéen, 2013, Mucem – Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée and Marseille-Provence 2013, Marseille (FR)

24°3′55″N – 5°3′23″E. Photographies, vidéo et volumes, 2012, L’Espace d’Art Contemporain, El Achour (DZ) (solo)

Sharjah Biennial 10: Plot for a Biennial, 2011, Sharjah (AE)