Art Moves Africa – Retracing Roots and Tracing New Routes: Mobility and Touring in North Africa

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Introduction
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1. 3.1 NORTH AFRICA
AS A
CULTURAL SPACE
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This report addresses mobility in a
region broadly designated as “North
Africa,” all the while recognizing the
instability of the term and the complexity
of the realities it purports to
encapsulate. Indeed, “North Africa” as
a geopolitical entity is largely the product
of divisions instituted by international
organizations along boundaries
established by colonial powers. These divisions
are upheld to this day by organizations such as
the African Union and the United Nations, albeit
with varying boundaries. They are also upheld in
everyday conversation, conceptions of identity,
cultural products and events.
1. 3
Socio-political
and historical
context
As a cultural and linguistic space, North Africa
is defined by a number of factors. First, the
heritage of the Amazighen (or Berbers), who are
the first inhabitants of present-day Morocco,
Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, northern Mali
and Niger as well as western Egypt. The region
is also bound by the sweep of Arabization and
Islamization, which took place between roughly
600 and 1000 A.D. Finally, the present-day countries
of North Africa share a common history of
Ottoman conquest (except Morocco, Mauritania
and Western Sahara) and 19 th - and 20th-century
European colonialism, with Morocco, Tunisia,
Algeria and Mauritania having been under French
rule; Libya under Italian rule; and Egypt being
occupied as a British protectorate from 1882
to 1952.
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QUOTE:
« Every time I want to get funding for a project,
I need to declare if I’m North African or
Southern African; Christian or Muslim;
Anglo or Franco. We’re being boxed into
spaces where we have to find ourselves within
a single identity. To successfully fill out that
form, you have to do away with the multilayered-ness
and complexity of that identity. Who
says I have to choose? Why can’t I be both? »
Jihan El-Tahri
Filmmaker, Cairo / Berlin.
Quote from Keynote speech
at 1:54 contemporary art fair in Marrakech, 2017.
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