Blue Skin of Algeria

Africa is known for its bold, unapologetic use of colour. Stories are told in pigments, tones and hues; a kaleidoscope as diverse as the cultures and peoples of the continent. For the initiative Colours of Africa, a collaborative project with Google Arts & Culture, we asked 60 African creatives to capture the unique spirit of their country in a colour which represents home to them.

The projects they have created are personal and distinct stories of Africa, put into images, videos, texts and illustrations. Each artist has also attempted to articulate what being African means to their identity and view of the world.

Colour:Blue
Country:Algeria

Artwork Rationale:

I live in Oran, a coastal town in north-west Algeria. Blue is the most culturally predominant colour after green, which is the colour of Islam and is found in mausoleums (mostly in rural areas).
We are in a good mood when the sea reflects the blue skies, music is made around the mood that blue gives.
A brown-skinned person is described as being ‘blue’ and there are many raï songs (local Algerian pop music) that evoke this skin colour to express beauty and charm, or just designate the opposite sex.
The iconic raï singer Chaba Zohra said in one of her songs, ‘women in Oran are blue because of the sea’, implying that they sunbathe and that this explains the colour of their skin.
We also find families with words meaning blue as their family name: zarga and lazrag are the female and male names for blue. But blue can also represent fear, melancholy, trauma or amateurism.
One of my long term projects focused on traditional festivals in western rural Algeria. I visited many villages on the particular day that they commemorate the founder or spiritual leader of the village.
People gather from various surrounding places for just one day to pray, sing, dance and enjoy a horse show. In the selection of images I’ve curated for Algeria’s colour, I have found the blue colour of my country in many situations.
The chipping paint on the side of an open truck, the panels of an old car, the fabrics of clothing, all in blue tones that represent Algeria.

The soundtrack that accompanies my video is a song by Cheb Khaled called 'Ala zarga rani nsal', which means 'I’m wondering about the brown skinned', and the flute in the song is a predominant instrument used by local bands in the rural areas of the country.

What it means to be African

Working with airlines gave me the chance to visit a few countries outside my native land, and what I saw made me feel that this continent was like a thousand leaves of a single tree. I listen to Fela Kuti, Salah Rageb, Waziri Oshomah or Steel Pulse and I feel that we speak the same language, the same rhythms. To be African now is to be in the future. This continent is full of hope, and we can't wait for it to be concrete.

Biography

Algerian photographer Ramzy Bensaadi was born in 1981 in Constantine. He currently lives in the Algerian city of Oran, on the north-west coast. Bensaadi has been taking photos of his home country since 2012, when he returned after a period of working in the airline industry in the UAE.

While he worked as a member of the cabin crew, Bensaadi would take photos of the places he travelled and send them home, a way of documenting the places he saw for his family. He noticed that there were very few authentic photo representations of Algeria available for anyone to see. Since that realisation, he has made it his mission to capture the place he calls home in photos.

Ramzy Bensaadi was one of the 25 projects/photographers shortlisted for the 2020 CAP Prize for Contemporary African Photography.