Dreams Have No Titles

Daily, starting at 6pm

In her films, photographs, installations, and performances, Zineb Sedira captures the spaces between people and places. Over 25 years, she has developed an artistic practice that explores transit and migration in its many forms, as well as storytelling about nation-states and their transformations. In her early film Mother Tongue (2002), Sedira portrayed three generations of women—herself, her mother, and her daughter—speaking about their childhoods in their different first languages of French, Arabic, and English. Sedira’s haunting photograph The Lovers (2008) shows two ships beached and rusting on the Mauritanian coast, a nod to all those who traverse the waterways between Africa and Europe. Throughout her work, Sedira is inspired by three countries: France, where she was born; Algeria, where her parents were born; and England, where she has lived for decades. Working across these countries and their colonial histories, Sedira highlights moments of resistance, both in the history of film in Algeria and in the concurrent resistance cinemas that grew alongside in Italy and France.

In 2022, Zineb Sedira won special mention at the Venice Biennale for Dreams Have No Titles, her presentation for the French Pavilion. A multi-layered installation, performance, and film, Sedira’s pavilion told her own story of falling in love with film—first watching Italian epics and Spaghetti Westerns in the cinema Les Variétés with her father, which eventually leads her to visit the Algerian Cinémathèque, Algiers’ rich film archive. For the film, Sedira restaged scenes from many of her favorite famous films, including surprising collaborations and solidarities across Italy, France, and Algeria during the country’s fight for independence. Dreams Have No Titles addresses a major turning point in the history of cultural, intellectual and avant-garde production of the 1960s and 1970s in France, Italy, and Algeria. Her contribution also serves as a cautionary tale about the failure of an emancipatory promise which, for many people, remains an unfulfilled dream.

Dreams Have No Titles was produced by the French Institute and presented in the French Pavilion, on the occasion of the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in collaboration with the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture, with the support of Mennour, Paris. The presentation of Dreams Have No Titles on the High Line marks both the first exhibition of the film after the 59th Venice Biennale, and its premiere in North America.

Zineb Sedira, Dreams Have No Titles is organized by Melanie Kress, Former Curator of High Line Art. The presentation of Dreams Have No Titles on the High Line is courtesy of the artist and Mennour, Paris.