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Always listening to other peoples and cultures, the Douarnenez festival has kept a foothold in Africa for its 42nd edition. After the Congos, he welcomes the "Algerian and Algerian". Their story, with that of France intertwined, their languages and cultures, their fears and their hopes, they tell them in their films, their books, photos and plastic creations, presented in Douarnenez. The festival poster also tells the story of Algeria's current turmoil. Decryption with its creator, Hania Zazoua, aka Princess Zazou.
It is a ball of solar energy and voluble whose hair "in firecracker", as she likes to say, hang the sun that persists to shine on Douarnenez, to the delight of festival-goers and organizers. The festival is full, the queues are - too - long and in the gallery Whales crushes , where expose Princess Zazou and Sven, collective Brokk'art , the curious crowd, seduced by the iconoclastic and ironic works of two accomplices.
Color, its " Trojan horse "
Because under the colorful and jubilant chromos of Princess Zazou's collages, the message is sometimes fierce. Contact well upstream of this edition by the organizers of the festival seduced by his work as a graphic designer, she had offered them a first draft but after February 22 , date of the first major street demonstration, and those who followed, she wanted to change his project " so that it is even better connected with the news ". " All the elements of my rebus " were already in place, she explains, these are the " pieces of a language that I created thirteen years ago, elements with which I knit my works " but it was necessary to refine and clarify the purpose also so that it is accessible to a non-Algerian public.
First element of this language invented by Princess Zazou: the color she presents us as a " Trojan horse ". At first glance, when we speak bright colors, we hear joy of life, childhood, innocence ... " The color allows me to go under radar ," she explains, to get my message but without blinking the signals of alarm of a power on the watch for irrelevant speeches. "
Two women on the belly of the poster: the maternal grandmother of the artist, the day of her marriage at the age of 15 - who was the first girl from her village of Kabylie to have her certificate of studies - and his own daughter, Sarah-Lou, almost at the same age, draped in an Algerian flag with boxing gloves, a kung fu follower who dreams of Japan, " a dancing beating girl". Two generations, two destinies. A tribute to women whose work and social role is still undervalued, according to Princess Zazou. Femininity is very present and claimed in all her works: blooming kitsch flowers, women's jewelry ... " It is not because we are a fighter that we must erase femininity. But I, I claim it ... My hair and firecracker my lips painted with red, "I assume and will not let go, she says," because I stay as I am! ".
The songs of the stadiums
At the feet of the two women, a balloon ... Masculinity and femininity, but that's not all. The ball is the football, the game, the opium of the people, an icon that she often uses in her works. The stadium and the football are an outlet for young Algerians to whom society offers nothing otherwise or not much in terms of leisure, projects of life, work, future. Except that this balloon, thanks to recent political events, has taken on a new meaning, that of revolt because the stadiums where " strutting officials " under the gaze of the cameras, vibrate songs of revolt. " Very politicized songs, sometimes a little vulgar, but of incredible relevance ! ". " I did not know them ," says the graphic designer. These songs have taken the streets in the demonstrations. One of these songs, La casa del Mouradia , that of the Omar-Hamadi stadium in Algiers (wink at the presidential palace), has become emblematic of the markets. A song now taken in chorus by the crowd and by many artists and whose Princess Zazou hums the lyrics.
" Since they have nothing to lose, they have the courage to say everything ." These young people from the stadiums who have found a smile on the street alongside their compatriots, starting with women. Princess Zazou tells us about the effervescence of these March Fridays, the complicity, the happiness found to be together in a fragmented society, to organize, the humor of the exchanges. She tells her 75-year-old mother who goes out with her " granny gang " to take part in these marches. The grannies in the demonstrations are doing a good job, she says, if only by calling to order those - the young people - who could let themselves a little. " Society is all, all generations! ".
"Every walker is a witness"
On the poster again, in a bubble, the injunction " clear! ", in Arabic ; flies, symbols of the decay, or even rot of the regime that echo a poster of Sven, also presented at the gallery, staging a wheelchair under perfusion ...
We still see a mobile phone like those brandished by demonstrators who document the demonstrations themselves. " Every walker is a witness ", while the journalists sometimes have difficulty following the steps because of the pressure they are under; and also the inscription " The end ", nod to the cinema and the festival of Douanenez of course, but also a symbol of the radical change that the protesters demand: they want not cosmetic changes of ministers but a change of political organization in which they will have their say.
Another symbol for us as familiar: the target of the ORTF, become at independence the RTA, Algerian Radio-Television. A single channel broadcasting from 17h where the pattern appeared "as soon as there was trouble " until it is replaced by wildlife documentaries. It ended up becoming a joke: " When an animal documentary is broadcast, one wonders who is dead, " she laughs ... And finally, the fish, in schools or alone, very present on all his works - fish who had arrested the team from Douarnenez, once the capital of the sardine cannery. The fish here represents mobility: it does not know the borders unlike the Algerians, forced by passports and visa applications. The Algerian green passport has become suspect, regrets the graphic designer. Double suspicion: in the eyes of the Algerian authorities and the host countries. " I love my country but I also need to breathe, meet other artists, " she says. And leaving also allows you to open your eyes to familiar places and objects and discover their beauty. Thus, it is in Aix-en-Provence where she made the School of Art that she discovered the beauty of the clothing fabrics of Kabyle women and rediscovered Algiers ...
The last element of the painting is the back of the poster, mainly composed of ceramic tiles. Graphics Arab-Andalusian, Ottoman, Roman ... but also the pavement of the beautiful Haussmann apartments in Algiers. All Mediterranean cultures make up this backdrop. An Algeria at the crossroads of multiple influences which she claims.
A journey between the two shores of the Mediterranean
Brokk'art is a " liner " on which creators of " dreamlike objects ", including Princess Zazou and Sven, also present in Douarnenez, would be the two captains. A place of art installed in an apartment, a place of life too since the structure offers a table d'hôtes.
Formed between Algiers and Aix-en-Provence, between the two shores of the Mediterranean, the artist has parents graduates, concerned about the social and professional success of their two children. The elder brother, turned doctor, and Hania. " I knew exactly what I did not want to do but I did not know what I wanted to do ..." She goes through the Sciences Po box, the year of Arabization when she is rather cultivated French (the Algerian languages were the subject of a debate in Douarnenez) and, on a suggestion of his father, passes the contest of Fine Arts of Algiers. A beautiful school, she recalls, a place of beauty and freedom in the leaded Algeria of the 1990s. To escape her clumsiness, she who is sorry for " his two left hands ", invites new modes of expression, embarks on collages, in 3D.
For her graduation work, she wrote a novel based on a memory told her maternal grandfather, printer and bookseller in Béjaïa: a small cove where the French and especially the young French girls danced, forbidden to access to the Algerians who watched them from the top of the cliff. She works with this story, photos of the city, videos, creates an installation. To mix the materials and the supports, it is always his way of doing, to stick, to embroider, to assemble on objects, furniture or round tables on tambourines of embroidery.
" We need to believe in ourselves again "! People in Algeria have plenty of ideas, desires, projects but the system works as a snuffer, according to Princess Zazou, who denounces the mediocrity of the elite, symbolized by the donkey in one of Sven's works presented in the gallery. " As soon as one shows a will to do, or to do otherwise ... One becomes a person to cut down, " a kind of hindrance to go around in circles. She opposes to this a bulimia of creation, a great generosity in her work and the way she communicates about it. " Generosity " , a term that often comes up in his words to define his compatriots and their relationship to the world. Generous people, in a " land of love ", and just waiting to be listened to.
► Also to listen : Mobilization in Algeria (series of reports)