Image: Foued Bouatba, Et notre terre, 2017. Sphere made of used clothing and shoes
For its seventh edition, held at 116 rue de Turenne in Paris and open to the public from 23 to 25 October 2026, Menart Fair is giving its Project Room to a generation of emerging artists who live and work in Algeria or have done so. Titled "Se mettre devant l'image" ("Standing in Front of the Image") and installed at stand F18, the presentation brings together 12 artists and is curated by Wassyla Tamzali, founder and director of Les Ateliers Sauvages, an independent art centre in central Algiers. It is supported by the Saison Méditerranée 2026, the Institut français d'Algérie, the City of Paris and Menart Friends.
All of the works were made by artists who worked in residence at Les Ateliers Sauvages, often in rooms still marked by those who had used them before; some have since left Algeria, and some returned to the centre later. In her curatorial text, Tamzali links her title to Assia Djebar's account of discovering the paintings of Baya, and presents the exhibition as an attempt to cross the distance between artist and viewer by talking about how the works were made.
Echoing the fair's theme, "Where is Home?", Tamzali describes the Ateliers as both a workplace and a kind of home. According to her text, the artists came of age during Algeria's civil war of the 1990s, followed by a wave of emigration, and their paths into art were shaped by colonial and postcolonial history, family and collective memory and the search for freedom. The range of subjects and styles, she writes, reflects above all the freedom to choose what to make and how.
The works span sculpture, installation, drawing, photography and ceramics. Foued Bouatba's "Et notre terre" (2017) is a sphere built from used clothing and shoes; Rima Djahnine's "L'annonce" (2013–2026) is an immersive installation of five suspended chairs, sewn textiles and sound. Mounir Gouri's "Routes Cousues" (2017) is stitched in black thread, Rima Rezaiguia's "Cartographie" (2018) combines engraved glass, tracing paper and coloured pencil, and Achraf Saadi's "L'homme de boue" (2025) is a photographic diptych. The other participants are Naim Boukir, Serine Hamami, Abdelmohcene Hamel, Houssem Harrak, Hakim Rezaoui, Fella Tamzali and Sofiane Zouggar.
On 23 October a round table in French on the Algerian scene, moderated by the art historian Malika Dorbani-Bouabdellah, brings Tamzali together with the philosopher Seloua Luste Boulbina, the writer Samir Toumi and Léna Kemiche, curatorial assistant at the Palais de Tokyo.
