Zineb Sedira

Zineb Sedira presented a set of prints and sculptures from her Sugar Routes (2013) series at Open Eye Gallery. Sedira’s works recount the history of transoceanic human migration, the triangular trade routes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the continued trade of sugar across the Atlantic for mass consumption. Working in a contemporary context, Sedira’s photographic prints depict sugar extracted from different parts of the world housed in a modern warehouse in the French port city of Marseille. The mountainous piles of sugar present a landscape of extraction where multiple geographies convene and merge with one another; the warehouse becoming an in-between space of encounter before the sugar is processed for consumption. Juxtaposed a sculpture of an anchor made from cane sugar found in the French silo, the works act as a metaphor for migration and diaspora.

The series was originally commissioned by Marseille Provence 2013, European Capital of Culture and the Port of Marseille.

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