Amina Zoubir

Amina Zoubir is one of the five artists who represented Algeria in 2019 with the first Algerian pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy. The Algerian pavilion was officially registered by the Ministry of Culture of Algeria at the Venice Biennale, however, few days before the opening of the Biennale, the registration was rescinded due to the unstable political situation related to Hirak, a movement of political protests manifested by the masses, which urges President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to resign on April 2, 2020, pushing the Minister of Culture to defer Algeria's official participation at Venice Biennale and to withdraw all financial support on April 4. This was an unexpected decision with no regard and consideration for what the curator and artists had accomplished to organize their project entitled Time to shine bright. Despite the tumuluous situation, the project of the first Algerian pavilion, Time to shine bright was conducted, with the support of private Algerian sponsors as an autonomous artists' action during the 58th Venice Biennale from May 9 to November 24, 2020.

Amina Zoubir was awarded the price Varenne FIGRA France in 2013, with a special mention for her performances Take your place, A Summer in Algiers, web documentary, which she directed in 2012 in Algiers, Algeria.

In 2012, Zoubir directed and performed Take your place, six feminist actions conducted in specific urban spaces including coffee salons, on the streets, soccer stadiums, beaches, hair salons, and in the clothing markets, where women face gender apartheid in Algiers, which broadcast on channel TV5 Monde and online on the web documentary platform Un été à Alger meaning A Summer in Algiers, produced by narrative (Paris) and Une chambre à soi (Algiers) with the support of CNC France, Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée and medias Algérie Focus, Libération in France, Channel TV5 Monde Africa. Her exploration of female representation in North Africa shows a fundamental need for reliable images of women living in the country nowadays and female presence in public space.

Amina Zoubir is well known as an Algerian feminist performer with video-actions entitled Take your place that she directed and performed in 2012 on chosen urban spaces to denounce gender apartheid applied on women in the Algerian society. She directed her first short documentary in 2006, entitled Take the bus and look, just a few years after Algeria ended the civil war. This work is seen as a documentary video where the body of the artist interacts through its relation to others, by way of the eyes of the bus passengers, wandering around the city of Algiers. Through this video documentary, a typography of the report of the inhabitants to their displacement in the city is drawn. The viewer regarding a typology of body behavior in the post'90s, a period of terrorism in Algeria, acquires the harshness of the look of the other, accompanied by the gentle poetry of being as conjugating through the look.

In 2010, Zoubir published her academic research as a book entitled video art of Algerian artists - Relation de l’image et du son dans la vidéo contemporaine algérienne : une expérience en temps réel.  Her research and practice question the notions of body language in specific spaces where religious, social, and political codifications are applied to define a body typology in North Africa territories.

Amina Zoubir is an Algerian-born French visual artist based between Paris, France and Algiers, Algeria. She was raised in a family of scientists and artists, her mother Hania is a doctor of medicine and researcher at the Pierre & Marie Curie Center at Hospital Mustapha Pacha in Algiers, while her father Hellal Zoubir is a notable painter and designer based in Algeria and represented by the Tafeta Gallery in London. She obtained the DESA degree of graphic design in 2006 at the Superior School of Fine Arts of Algiers École supérieure des beaux-arts d'Alger, Algeria. She moved to Paris, France in 2007 to develop her artistic research and practice where she graduated with a Master of Theory and Practice of Contemporary Art and New Media in 2009 at the University Paris VIII. In 2006, Zoubir directed her first documentary film as a performative video-action entitled Take the bus and look, developing an incipient reflection on the relationship between individuals, art, and cinema in the early turmoil of a society rising after the collective trauma of a civil war.

Amina Zoubir grew up in Algeria amid the tensions of civil war that she witnessed with her family, this experience has bolstered her spirit of resilience as represented in her work, which aims to create a dialogue to heal the social body of Algerian society. She was affected in Algiers by the tensions of gender issues and made the decision at the tender age of 17, to study art at the Superior School of Fine Arts of Algiers École supérieure des beaux-arts d'Alger, where director Ahmed Asselah and his son Rabah were murdered on March 5, 1994, during the civil war.

Amina Zoubir (born 1983) is a contemporary artist, filmmaker and performer from Algiers, Algeria. She is known as a feminist performer through video-actions entitled Take your place, which she directed in 2012 during the 50th anniversary of Algerian independence, aiming to question gender issues and conditions of women in Algerian society. She has worked with different art mediums such as sculpture, drawing, installation art, performance and video art. Her work relates to notions of body language in specific spaces of North Africa territories.