Lydia Ourahmane
∗1992, Algeria
Lydia Ourahmane (1992, Saïda, Algeria) lives and works in Barcelona. Her practice ranges from installations with found objects, to video and sound works, to performance. The concept of space lies at the core of her artistic research—the space of memories and private life, space as the perception of the movement of others, and space as a social and political construct.“I think about situations, whether discrete or not, as interferences or insertions. The work passes through an existing infrastructure or re-routes a trajectory. I’m not necessarily interested in criticism, I’m interested in reform. Art for me is about life moving through it, where it becomes a sort of switchboard in real time to ask questions that engage with reality and seamlessly integrate it into a context. If a methodology is interactive, it becomes a collective experience.”
Ourahmane was born and raised in Algeria before moving to London with her family at the age of 9. The artist’s works bear witness to histories of colonial violence, displacement and survival.
At the centre of the abandoned Hotel Ladinia, Ourahmane reactivates the former bar and lounge as a site of encounter. Closed since 1998, the space once functioned as a social nucleus, where guests and locals gathered to drink, talk, and play games. Through conversations with former staff and visitors, the artist traces fragments of these past uses and reintroduces them as living gestures.
For the Biennale, the bar is reopened as a provisional setting: visitors are invited to bring their own drinks and gather around bespoke tables to play chess. Rather than reconstructing a specific history, the work operates through re-enactment and participation, allowing new interactions to unfold within an existing architecture.
The installation shifts the space from absence to use, foregrounding social exchange as material. What emerges is a subtle reactivation of memory—where past and present overlap through collective presence and shared time.
This project has been made possible with the support of Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)
