Biography
Yasmina Reggad is an independent curator, performance artist, writer and dramaturge based in Brussels (Belgium). She holds an MA in Medieval History from the Sorbonne University (France). She currently is the curator of the French Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (Italy), Artistic director of the Bienal das Amazônias (Brazil), and curator at aria (artist residency in algiers, Algeria).
Yasmina Reggad’s performative works have recently been staged at Chimurenga’s Pan African Space Station Liberation Radio Dar es Salaam – Documenta 15 (Tanzania); Beursschouwburg, KANAL-Centre Pompidou and Kaaistudio’s (Belgium); La Cantine Syrienne de Montreuil, Les Rencontres à l’échelle / Mucem and Jeu de Paume (France); Tabakalera International Centre for Contemporary Culture (Spain) and Biennale Warszawa (Poland). She is a member of the YouYou ensemble (Belgium) and was a Fellow Playwright 2019-2020 of the Sundance Institute Theatre Program (USA).
Yasmina Reggad has conceived exhibitions, screenings, performance and educational programmes at international institutions such as Delfina Foundation, The Mosaics Rooms, Tate Modern, Institute of Contemporary Arts (UK); DJART Biennial (Algeria); Art Dubai Projects (UAE); L’atelier de l’observatoire (Morocco); CENTQUATREPARIS (France) among others. She also regularly contributes essays on contemporary art and performance art.
Yasmina Reggad also works as a dramaturge and has collaborated with choreographer Ioanna Angelopoulou, dancer-choreographer Trajal Harrell and performance artist Carlos Azeredo Mesquita.
In residentie A House divided. An alternative history of Pan-Arabism
01.11.2024 – 01.11.2024
A House divided. An alternative history of Pan-Arabism [working title] draws on the research developed in Yasmina Reggad’s long-term project we dreamt of utopia and we woke up screaming and takes a closer look at the possibilities of performing an academic essay. The research is titled after and based on an academic essay published in the 70s that recounts the history of the radio Voice of Palestine, a Palestinian broadcast in exile. This particular essay combines scholarship, sonic elements and dramatisation to tell the story of the (failed) Pan-Arabism project through the history of the multiple Voice of Palestine.
In previous works, Yasmina Reggad explored the idea of the ‘essayistic performance’, employing choreography or performance’s processes as an alternative or equivalent to essay writing. With A House divided. An alternative history of Pan-Arabism [working title] she questions to which extent a performative work or gestures could carry the essence of an essay or hold essayistic textures and qualities, while producing new forms of processing and disseminating knowledge and archival material. On the other hand, she interrogates how an essay – drawing the sketch of a demonstration – could become performative. Interested in exploring the position of the researcher, she specifically examines the notions of production of proof and authenticity. This enquiry calls on the re-enactment of an essay as an artistic strategy of translation/transformation and researches how to unveil elements intrinsic to the writing process from metatext, footnotes, and fieldwork, to bibliography.
