Lydia Ourahmane has always known movement; transience is the way she was taught to live. Ourahmane uprooted and recreated in full her entire rented apartment from Algiers, wanting to be “home” when the borders sealed due to the pandemic. Entrance (1901–2021) comprises two functioning doors. On the second street from the sea, the original wooden door (1901) derives from a blueprint of a typical Parisian apartment, as the French occupation wanted Algiers to looked like France. The second metal door, with five locks, was added during the 1990s, in the Civil War. Embodying a collapse of the two moments, the slightly ajar entrance is an architectural invasion of the collective trust that had been built, broken anew in the War of Independence. Writer and curator Negar Azimi described it as a “stirring sculpture, a palimpsest of histories”. It is charged with psychological tension as, when Ourahmane felt more paranoid, she would lock more locks to feel safe. Now in use again by friends, the apartment and its “returned” objects have since settled. Relieving it of the original entrance, Ourahmane says, was cathartic.
This is the first time the work of Lydia Ourahmane is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Khushi Nansi
