Dreams have no titles

Zineb Sedira

Whitechapel Gallery (15 February – 12 May 2024)

Review by Sana Nassari

Dreams Have No Titles, originally conceived for the French Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, is a mesmerising, multifaceted art installation that encompasses film, sculpture, photography and performance. Within the gallery spaces, Zineb Sedira recreates a sequence of film sets, based on films made during the 1960s, 70s and 80s across France, Algeria and Italy. It was a significant era in avant-garde and activist filmmaking, particularly notable for Algerian post-independence cinema.

Initially, visitors will find themselves in the ballroom scene from Ettore Scola’s renowned film Le Bal (1983). Intermittently, the ballroom with its bar comes to life in the presence of a tango dancing couple, reminiscent of the dancers in the film, performing as if for an imaginary camera. As they dance, there is a question whether this is cinema, a play or an art performance, showcasing the fluidity of genres that Sedira introduces into her exhibition. Surprisingly, the experience felt heightened when I arrived in the bar during a lull in the tango performance (visitors will still witness Sedira’s interpretation of the scene in the final room, presented in a full-scale cinema setting). In the absence of the dancers, the ambiance is made palpable with lingering music and marking tape on the dance floor, signalling an absence. While this absence boldly underscores the actors’ missing presence, it also freezes the scene in time, invoking a sense of nostalgia – memories never fade, especially in nations that have experienced colonialism. Through this film-ballroom-bar installation, Sedira ingeniously evokes the magic of cinema without relying on the medium itself, inviting viewers to engage with the artwork on a deeper level.

Continuing into the exhibition, viewers encounter various film sets, which they will recognise later through screenings in the last room. And also, they will see a doll’s house perched atop silvery flight cases for film equipment, reproducing Sedira’s home living room. 

Repeated signs on the stairs indicate that the ‘exhibition continues upstairs’. Here, a recreated set reminiscent of a room in Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, is placed. In the next room, the coffin from Luchino Visconti’s film of the book by Albert Camus, The Stranger (1967) appears, then another section, inspired by Orson Welles’ film on art forgery, F For Fake (1973), leads to a faithful, life-size recreation of Sedira’s own cosy living room in Brixton, London, complete with books, film posters, and objects from the previously referenced films. It’s unclear whether this is her actual furniture or an immersive copy of her living room. The familiarity is reinforced by the doll’s house version earlier encountered on the ground floor, which also features a maquette of Sedira. 

The exhibition journey reaches its culmination in the final room, where a full-scale cinema has been constructed to screen Sedira’s film which has the same title as the exhibition, Dreams Have No Titles. The mystery deepens as, in the film, Sedira’s hand places her own miniature in the doll’s house. The repetition extends to other scenes, for example a scene in the film with a live band set in the ballroom, in which Sedira plays, sings and dances. As viewers watch her film, Sedira is depicted watching a film in another prefabricated cinema within it, creating a labyrinth of real and imitative experiences. This exhibition blurs the boundaries between reality and representation, creating a loop in which the viewer’s experience mirrors the artist’s actions within the exhibition space.

By bouncing the viewer between reality, cinema, performance and re-created sets, all delicately bonded with objects from historic-archival and post-liberation material culture, the exhibition leaves you questioning the authenticity of history. What we gaze upon might just be a replica, film sets whose origins and intentions remain obscure. The silver lining is, however, a realisation that we can become creators ourselves, shaping the forthcoming chapters of history.