ISBN: 1884919359

Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Sternberg Press
Language: English

Artists who belong to Algeria are caught between a national mythology that does not represent them and a historical space blanked out by state-sanctioned amnesia on both sides of the Mediterranean. Waiting for Omar Gatlato: A Survey of Contemporary Art from Algeria and Its Diaspora presents the work of twenty-five such artists who offer diverse representations of everyday life and are rigorously critical in their engagement with the legacies of Orientalist figuration, modernist abstraction, monumental public art, Conceptual art, and postmodern media theory after 1962, in a postindependence context.

This publication includes the first English translations of texts by key theorists of contemporary art in Algeria on the evolving relationship between art and politics, as well as poetry by Samira Negrouche and a graphic essay by Nawel Louerrad. The book’s title comes from an essay by Wassyla Tamzali on Merzak Allouache’s 1977 film Omar Gatlato.