The Politics of Belonging in Algerian Art

This book explores modern Algerian art through the work of Denis Martinez, focusing on his 1989 series 7 murs revisités (Seven Walls Revisited). Organized in 1990 in Algeria’s Kabyle region, on the eve of the Algerian Civil War, the project emerged amid ongoing debates over cultural recognition and belonging within a postcolonial state negotiating national identity. The book argues that in decolonizing societies, modern art often exposes internal cultural and political tensions surrounding nationhood. As an Algerian of Spanish descent, Martinez embraced Algeria’s historical and cultural plurality, drawing on Amazigh art and other marginalized visual and symbolic languages not merely as aesthetic resources but as a means of articulating alternative forms of belonging. By grounding modern painting in vernacular practices and locally embedded histories, Martinez challenged dominant nationalist frameworks and reimagined art as a practice of ethical recognition, cultural inclusion, and political possibility.