Not on display
- Artist
- Zineb Sedira born 1963
- Medium
- Video, 3 flat screens, colour and sound (stereo)
- Dimensions
- Duration: 5min
overall display dimensions variable - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 2007
- Reference
- T12315
Display caption
In Mother Tongue the artist, her mother and her daughter try to exchange childhood memories in their native languages: French, Arabic and English. Sedira was born in Paris to Algerian parents, and moved to London to study art, where her daughter was born. The work reflects on storytelling as a way to preserve cultural identity across generations. It underscores the difficulty of maintaining a shared heritage across national and linguistic divides and acknowledges the complexity of identity.
Gallery label, May 2019
Does this text contain inaccurate information or language that you feel we should improve or change? We would like to hear from you.
Film and audio
-
TateShots
Zineb Sedira: ‘The personal is political’
Watch artist Zineb Sedira take us around her home, studio and the streets of Brixton
Explore
- emotions, concepts and ideas(16,531)
-
- emotions and human qualities(5,350)
-
- memory(370)
- formal qualities(12,564)
-
- photographic(4,742)
- actions: expressive(2,631)
-
- talking(608)
- woman(9,059)
- head / face(2,499)
- Arabic(21)
- family(4,136)
-
- daughter(719)
- grandmother(101)
- mother(1,353)
- cultural identity(7,944)
- Algerian(7)
- migration(20)
You might like
-
Pierre Huyghe A Journey that wasn’t
2005 -
Lamia Joreige Objects of War No.1
2000 -
Christian Boltanski The Reserve of Dead Swiss
1990 -
Tony Oursler The Most Beautiful Thing I’ve Never Seen
1995 -
Louise Bourgeois Cell XIV (Portrait)
2000 -
Lamia Joreige Objects of War No.3
2006 -
Tracey Emin Tracey Emin C.V. Cunt Vernacular
1997 -
Lamia Joreige Objects of War No.2
2003 -
Lamia Joreige Objects of War No.4
2006 -
Fikret Atay Rebels of the Dance
2002 -
Isaac Julien Vagabondia
2000 -
Mark Wallinger Threshold to the Kingdom
2000 -
Elliot Erwitt The British Museum, London
1995 -
Kader Attia Oil and Sugar #2
2007 -
Louise Bourgeois Empty Nest
1994