Lydia Ourahmane: Tassili

As part of its Open Space programme, the Fondation Louis Vuitton presents Lydia Ourahmane’s Tassili (2022), a film shot in Tassili n’Ajjer. Classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this exceptional mountainous region of the central Sahara Desert extends across 72,000 km²/ 27,799 mi² and is filled with thousands of rock engravings and cave paintings that bear witness to humans, animals, and vegetation that thrived, evolved, and disappeared in the area before climate change transformed it into a desert. The exhibition marks the first presentation of Lydia Ourahmane’s works in France.

To shoot the film, Lydia Ourahmane embarked on a 13 day journey with a team of collaborators, including friends and local guides. They explored the vast arid plateau that is difficult to access due to the hostile conditions as well as military and governmental restrictions. The night and day images of this lunar landscape and its millennia-old paintings shot in 4K, a digital technology qualified as ultra-high definition, are striking in their hyperrealism—questioning the potential for this vertiginous, hypnotic wandering to capture an encounter with a place filled with history and spirituality. The artist invites the viewer to immerse themselves, while simultaneously being guided. She commissioned four musicians - Nicolás Jaar, felicita, Yawning Portal, and Sega Bodega – to each create, separately, a soundtrack. The film also incorporates digital animations made from photogrammetry scans, taken on site in collaboration with the artist Yuma Burgess.

Between fiction and reality, the film Tassili offers a hallucinatory experience, an original quest with mystical overtones that propels us into a visual and sonic journey beyond time.

“Lydia Ourahmane, Tassili” 2022 is commissioned and produced by SculptureCenter, New York; Rhizome, Algiers; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunisia; Mercer Union, Toronto; and Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham. Tassili is made possible by the Valeria Napoleone XX SculptureCenter (VNXXSC). Commissioning support is provided by the VIA Art Fund. The film will be presented at these institutions throughout 2022 and 2023.

Invited by Lydia Ourahmane, musicians felicita, Yawning Portal, and Sega Bodega will perform at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, on Friday 7 October 2022.

The exhibition is curated by Ludovic Delalande and Claudia Buizza.

Biography of the artist
Lydia Ourahmane (1992, Saïda, Algeria) lives and works between Algiers and Barcelona. Spanning video, sound, performance, installation, and sculpture, Lydia Ourahmane’s multidisciplinary work is imbued with spirituality, contemporary geopolitics, colonial histories, and migration. Drawing on personal and collective experiences and narratives, the artist questions institutional structures such as surveillance, logistics, and bureaucratic processes, and the way they exercise authority.

Amongst her recent exhibitions: Barzakh, S.M.A.K, Ghent (2022); Tassili, SculptureCenter, New York (2022), Survival in the after life, Portikus, Frankfurt, and De Appel, Amsterdam (2021); Barzakh, Kunsthalle Basel and Triangle–Astérides, Marseille (2021); Solar Cry, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2020); and The you in us, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2018). Her work was exhibited at the 34th São Paulo Biennial (2021) and the New Museum Triennial (2018). With Alex Ayed, she presented LAWS OF CONFUSION, Renaissance Society, Chicago (2021), as well as Risquons Tout, WIELS Contemporary Art Center, Brussels (2020).

About Open Space
Open Space is a programme dedicated to the most contemporary artistic expressions. National and international artists are invited to create a specific project for the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Open Space takes place regularly in different settings around Frank Gehry’s building. Between 2018 and 2022, this programme has hosted solo exhibitions by Jean-Marie Appriou (1986, France), Matt Copson (1992, UK), Anna Hulačová (1984, Czech Republic), Hoël Duret (1988, France), Lauren Halsey (1987, US), Meriem Bennani (1988, Morocco), Jean Claracq (1991, France), Bianca Bondi (1986, South Africa), Özgür Kar (1992, Turkey).