Wind, sand and stars

As a stranger, with a feeling of being on the outside, I have walked the streets of Algiers trying to connect. I have documented everything from the city to the life of my family. I have been interested in the smaller details: street signs in Arabic, a cactus growing through the fence and people in

Wind, Sand and Stars

I am a Norwegian/Algerian artist raised in Norway by my Norwegian mother, and without knowing my Algerian father and his family. I have always been curious about my other country of origin. As a adult, I finally made contact with my father and more recently, my wider family in Algeria. When my Berber grandmother turned 100, she wrote me a letter so that I wouldn’t forget about my father’s homeland. This project is an attempt to research my own identity as a western feminist woman investigating this foreignness that makes up half my bloodline.

I also see how I am connected to a long lineage of women, who are the core of the family unit. This project explores their stories, as well as my own. By mixing portraits of Algerian women, self-portraits, archival images, and traces of memories my mother been telling me as a child, and text about my experiences.

The final result will be a photobook . Employing different techniques, including Hasselblad, Polaroid and 35 mm cameras, combined with text, the book will be a journal of sorts

This is the start of an ongoing project