Father Tongue

Last year, I returned to Algiers for the first time in almost two decades. Instigated , as a curatorial research trip, the visit ultimately evolved into a deeply personal journey.

- Bilal Akkouche

Having travelled there with my Algerian father, we stayed together at my grandfather's house and, over the course of two weeks, undertook a profound exploration of modern and contemporary art, personal identity and memory.

One of our first visits was to the city's Musée National des Beaux-Arts. There, as I stood before Les Casbahs ne s'assiègent pas (The Casbahs Are Not Besieged, 1961-82) by Mohammed Khadda, one of Algeria's leading modernist painters, I recalled wandering the same labyrinthine passages that the artist depicts in his work as a site of resistance against French colonial occupation. (France annexed Algeria in 1834, with the country only regaining independence in 1962.) A stronghold of the Algerian Front de libération nationale (National Liberation Front), the Casbah's dense architecture and narrow, winding alleys rendered it nearly impenetrable to French forces, making it a site of refuge and resistance.

Alongside important pieces by Khadda, the Musée National des Beaux-Arts also holds a significant collection of works by Baya (Mahieddine) and M'hamed Issiakhem, who, along with Khadda and others, helped establish modern painting in Algeria. In 1963, just one year after independence, Khadda and Issiakhem were among 12 co-founding artists of the l'Union Nationale des Arts Plastiques (National Union of Plastic Arts). Four years later, in 1967, Baya became the only female signatory of the Manifesto of Aouchem, a postcolonial artistic collective that took its name from the Indigenous Amazigh practices of body art. Members of Aouchem sought to ground their work in visual heritages they believed had evolved from the prehistoric cave paintings of the Tassili Mountains.