Zineb Sedira
Dreams Are a Language Made of Images, 2025
Dreams Are a Language Made of Images, is a large-scale text installation by Zineb Sedira, a London-based Franco Algerian artist who is known for exploring themes of identity, gender, and family history. Using film, photography, installation and performance, Sedira examines personal stories in relation to broader geopolitical narratives.
It was created by the artist specifically for this site by the River Lea at 3 Mills Studios, a leading centre for film and TV production. The text is based on a quote from the Italian filmmaker, Federico Fellini, who was most famous for his 1960s films, including La Dolce Vita. The work encourages reflection about the interrelationship between dreams and cinema, recurring themes in Sedira’s practice, here with the added element of the river. As the artist notes: ‘Rivers are forever changing and moving. Like dreams they are not fixed. Rivers are places of mobility, routes to other countries, other worlds, other dreams’.
Dreams Are a Language Made of Images, is The Line’s fourth iteration of Longitudinal Dialogues, a programme that takes its location on the Greenwich Meridian as a starting point for global cultural exchange. The Meridian, on which both the UK and Algeria are located, runs only a few hundred metres to the east of this installation.
Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery, London
Co-curated with Arup Phase 2
Generously supported by Zineb Sedira Commission Circle: Maria Sukkar, and those who wish to remain anonymous.
Supported by
Biography
Zineb Sedira was born in Paris in 1963 to Algerian parents and relocated to London in the mid-1980s. She studied at Central Saint Martins (1992-1995), Slade School of Art (1995-1997) and Royal College of Art (1998-2003). Sedira’s considered approach to migration, storytelling, and the bias of official histories – initially through photography and film, and later encompassing sculpture, installation and performance – has established her as a significant voice in contemporary art.
Sedira has exhibited widely. Her installation Dreams have no titles received special mention from the jury at the 2022 Venice Biennale, where she represented France. The show was subsequently recreated at the Whitechapel Gallery, London in 2024. Other solo exhibitions include Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston (2013), Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Musée d’Art Contemporain, MAC (2010) and Photographers’ Gallery, London (2006). Group exhibitions include Tate Britain, London (2023-2025), the High Line, New York (2023), FRAC Lorraine, Metz, (2015), Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2010), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2005 and 2009) and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2005). Her work is held in collections worldwide including Arts Council England, Centre Pompidou, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston, Musée d’art contemporain, Marseille [MAC], Sharjah Art Museum Collection, Tate, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
She was shortlisted for the 2021 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize and nominated for the 2015 Marcel Duchamp Award. In 2012 Sedira founded aria (artist residency in Algiers), a residency programme to support the development of the contemporary art scene in Algeria through international cross-cultural exchanges and collaborations. She lives in London and works between Algiers, Paris, and London.
Image: Adrian Flower
