Katia Kameli

Katia Kameli (b. 1973, Clermont-Ferrand, France) is a French-Algerian artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Paris. She makes films, video installations, photographs and watercolours, and since 2022 ceramic bird sculptures that can be played as ocarinas. Her work starts from research into history and culture, and she describes herself as a translator.

Stream of Stories, begun in 2015, follows animal fables back to Kalila wa Dimnah. The Canticle of the Birds, begun in 2022, reworks Farid ud-Din Attar's 12th-century poem from Leili Anvar's French translation. It includes a 2022 video commissioned by the Institut des cultures d'Islam and filmed in La Goutte-d'Or, Paris. It also includes Seven Valleys (2023), ink on silk nearly 16 metres long, and ocarinas made with the ceramicist Marie Picard.

Kameli graduated from the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Bourges and completed the Collège-Invisible post-diploma in Marseille. Solo shows include Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York (2014), The Mosaic Rooms, London (2016), Kunsthalle Münster (2019) and Kalmar Konstmuseum (2020). FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Marseille, followed in 2021. In 2023 she showed at Bétonsalon and the Institut des cultures d'Islam, Paris. Group shows include the Centre Pompidou (2016 and 2020), Mucem (2016 and 2021) and the Louvre Abu Dhabi (2024). She was nominated for the AWARE Prize in 2022. Her work is held by the Centre Pompidou, the CNAP, MACBA and the Smith College Museum of Art.