Iniva presents the first London exhibition of Zineb Sedira's recently commissioned video work Floating Coffins at Rivington Place. Floating Coffins was filmed on the little known but beautiful coastline of Mauritania, a bird watcher's paradise. It is also where the world's shipping is beached and broken up, drawing parallels with another of the region's characteristics - the harbour city of Nouadhibou, which has become a point of departure for African migrants trying to reach Europe. 'This unique phenomenon on the Saharan shores represents both a hazard to shipping and an ecological threat. Also the sea becomes a space of 'decline' and an inactive landscape where lifeless ships and human bodies can be found rejected by the sea.' Zineb Sedira
Acclaimed international artist Zineb Sedira is also showing new photographic and light box works to accompany Floating Coffins at Rivington Place.
The installation is presented on a complex arrangement of 14 screens with layered sound compiled by Mikhail Karikis. The work lingers with surreal ease on figures removing scrap, birds arriving, and the extraordinary landscape where desert, sea and man’s struggle to survive, all combine.
'Floating Coffins is a space where life, death, loss, escape, abandoned and shipwrecked journeys meet. It's both a toxic graveyard and a source for survival and hope.' Zineb Sedira.
Zineb Sedira came to wider attention through the British Art Show and her solo show Saphir at the Photographers' Gallery in 2006. Sedira continues to explore her interest in displacement, mobility and the haunting beauty of abandoned landscapes in her new work.
Curator Tessa Jackson (CEO of Iniva) said: 'Iniva is delighted to present Zineb at Rivington Place. Her lyrical and quietly compelling films reflect on dialogues Iniva has long been engaged with concerning diverse experiences of migration, transition and loss.'
IMAGE
Zineb Sedira,
Floating Coffins, 2009.
Still from video work
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