The 1-54 London art fair has invited the Hamid Khellafi Gallery to present its exhibition Do you hear the landscape? at the Afreximbank stand, bringing together Algerian artists through painting, photography and video. The exhibition explores the landscape as a mirror of the self and as a place of collective memory, resistance and resilience.

By weaving together a variety of aesthetic languages, this exhibition offers a glimpse into algeria’s contemporary art scene, a dialogue between past and present, individual and collective, memory and imagination. Artists presented by the Hamid Khellafi gallery: Sadek Rahim and Mehdi Djelil.

This project is supported by Afreximbank under the auspices of the Afreximbank art program.

Inspired by a reflection by the algerian writer Mohammed Dib, the exhibition explores the idea of landscape as both the origin and a mirror of the human experience. As Dib suggests, the landscape is the place where life begins and where consciousness unfolds; it is also the place where memory and identity constantly return.

This philosophical starting point shapes Bouchenak’s curatorial approach, placing the algerian art scene within a territory shaped by cultural richness, historical transitions and multiple forms of resilience.

Representing the art scene of an entire country is, by its very nature, an impossible task. Rather than attempting to encompass algerian art in its entirety, Do you understand the landscape? offers an immersive snapshot, a constellation of voices that collectively evoke the complexity of algeria without claiming to define it.

The exhibition highlights how algerian artists navigate between past and present, continuity and break, the intimate and the collective. It recognises algeria’s cultural diversity and vast geography while addressing the lingering traces of colonial history and political transition. In these shifting contexts, art becomes both a language of expression and a form of resistance, opening up spaces for dialogue and free thought.