Nesrine Salem is interested in the hypervisibilization of diasporic beings.
She uses post-digital image-capture methods such as 360° cameras to gather filmic material that she calls “reported videos”.
Through her video work and the installation of her films, she highlights a common elsewhere, its strangeness as well as its familiarity, by connecting seemingly unrelated spaces. Her filmmaking methods sometimes blur and sometimes make explicit the geography of the places she films.
In “What is the residue left from setting a black puddle on fire?”*, she stages individuals in Vlog aesthetics and works the monologue form to speak of intergenerational trauma, tokenism, and mourning practices. This project marks the appearance of human characters in her work, and addresses the question of language and voice.
The eleven poems that make up this short film are collected in a trilingual publication (English, French, Darija/Algiers dialect) published in March 2023 by Postfirebooks.
Nesrine Salem won the Mécènes du Sud Montpellier- Sète prize in 2022. She exhibited at La Ferme du Buisson as part of the first Les sillons an exhibition curated by Thomas Conchou in March 2023, at the Cnac Magasin for the third En attendant Omar Gatlato exhibition on the art scene in Algeria and its diaspora by Natasha Marie Llorens in April 2023, and most recently in October 2023 at Montpellier Contemporain for the SOL! biennial. This past year she also participated in Montpellier Contemporain’s Saison 6 post-graduate program at the São Paulo and Helsinki biennales. In Autumn 2024, she will be in residence at Triangle Astérides to finalize her new project which marks the appearance of French in her writing.
By challenging the one-dimensional image of diasporic beings, Nesrine Salem aims to celebrate the plural nature of her identity.
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Portrait courtesy of Sabrina Hadj-Hacene
What is the residue left from setting a black puddle on fire? short film, 25mn35s, 2023
Co-production Mécènes du Sud, La Ferme du Buisson and Le Magasin-CNAC
With the collaboration of Chaima Boumaaz (actress), Zoé Leber (Sound Design), Igor Dubreucq (VFX 3D), Louise Dib- Chimbo (graphic design).
