The exhibition “Sea Urchins of Memory” is the result of the residency of Massinissa Selmani, an artist invited to the Frac in 2024 as part of the Innovation & Creation Hub.
This artist's drawing practice, influenced by photography and photojournalism, questions the mechanisms and rules that govern the construction of narratives, but also, by extension, archives, the capture of events and their dissemination .
Massinissa Selmani is developing a project centered on the practice of amateur photography. His approach involves personal narratives linked to exceptional events, recounted by people in his circle (notably his father, who photographed the city of Tizi Ouzou on Algeria's Independence Day). In parallel, the artist studies the weather on the day of these events. This allows him to ground the fact/history in something tangible—something that escapes the control of a fabricated narrative—when collected scientifically. Through these personal stories connected to historical events, juxtaposed with the weather of the day, the artist creates another form of narrative while simultaneously transporting us to Algeria during its celebrations.
