Driss Ouadahi at the 12th Berlin Biennale

Driss Ouadahi participates in the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, 2022.

 

The 12th Berlin Biennale takes place from June 11 to September 18, 2022 and is curated by Kader Attia in collaboration with Ana Teixeira Pinto, Đỗ Tường Linh, Marie Helene Pereira, Noam Segal, and Rasha Salti.

 

Under the title Still Present!, artists from around the globe engage with the legacies of modernity and the resulting state of planetary emergency. They map the world with its ruptures and contradictions, create countertrajectories to the colonial narrative, and propose decolonial strategies for the future. How can a decolonial ecology be shaped? What role can non-Western feminist movements play in the reappropriation of history? How can the debate on restitution be reinvented beyond the return of plundered goods? Can the field of emotion be reclaimed through art?

Driss Ouadahi was born a few years after the founding of the National Liberation Front (FLN, 1954), in which his father played a pivotal role. In Ouadahi's paintings and constructed political imaginaries, he explores the presence of ruins throughout Algeria, especially the unfinished buildings that are so ubiquitous in the country's contemporary landscape.

 

From a viewer's standpoint, could we consider Ouadahi's oeuvre as a depiction of our political, social, and economic margins? If so, to what extent can we shift a singular center to a multiplicity of centers based on each viewer's perspective and context? The combination of painting and architecture in these works provides us with tools for understanding the depth of the colonial enterprise and its structural manifestations.

 

Text: Marie Helene Pereira

Venue: Hamburger-Bahnhof Museum Für Gegenwart, Berlin

Dates: 11 June -  18 September 2022.

June 10, 2022