For my family, Oran is a place that you long for, removed from any possible present and future. For me, it’s a post-memory and the need to start a new story. In 1962, Algeria finally gained its independence from France, after 130 years of colonialism and 8 years of war. Reina, my Spanish mother, born in Algiers and raised in Oran during the conflict, migrated to France at her 10 ( after a few months in Spain) in 1962, where she is one of 4-million people directly connected to this troubled transnational history. “Searching for Oran” is a personal journey and a conversation that aims to bring together different voices, generations and territories, from France to Algeria, through Argentina where I migrated more than a decade ago.
By a strange coincidence, the second city called Oran in the world, is located in Argentina, where I live. I propose a journey from New Oran (Argentina) to Oran (Algeria), around migration, identity,memories and colonialism. Searching for Oran” is an intimate and personal reflection, necessary to be able to embrace a collective process with the other heirs. This project is a chapter of a long-term and ongoing visual research and the reflexive basis of the subsequent chapter, "Algeria, a mosaic of heirs", where I go to meet other people like me, from the generation of the after, connected in different ways with Algeria in the French society.
With the support of the CNAP - Center of National Visual Arts (2021 - France) and the FNA . National Fund for Arts ( 2023-Argentina)
Teaser of the video piece
HISTORY/STORY
Overlay of an old colonial map showing Algeria as a part of the French territory with a mental map , drawn by Reina, my mother about her memories of the neighborhood where she grew up in Oran and the war.
From a conflictive memory and a land of contradictions :
ORAN, ARGENTINA - Ramon Pizzaro, who founded the city of New Oran in 1794,in Argentina
BAGNEUX, FRANCE - Portait of Reina, my mother
CARTAGENA, SPAIN - Blurry view from Cartagena, where my family comes from, looking in Oran, Algeria direction just on the other side of the sea.
MARSEILLE, FRANCE - Self portrait with blond hair and a mediteranean light.
"ORAN?"
ARCHIVE + ORAN, ARGENTINA. Overlay of an old picture of my mother house in the spanish and popular neighborhood of Orán, called Echkmul, close to the " plaza de toros" on a picture from Oran, Argentina, which definitly could be Oran, Algeria today.
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA
ORAN, ARGENTINA - View of Guemes monument, hero of the independance of Argentina. The pride to be the last colonial city founded by the spanish colonial power dialogues in the city with the monuments to the glory of the Independance fight.
PARIS, FRANCE - SWEET BLOODY MEMORIES
A zlabia, a typical Algerian sweet on paper and my mother's favorite since childhood. The knife bursts into the picture in the same way as certain traumatic and violent memories from her Algerian childhood.
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA Map of France is the old soldiers unions in Buenos Aires, Argentina
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA - My mum and I