On Saturday, October 24, 2026, we had the opportunity to spend the morning at the Aguas Internacionales cultural center listening to Samia Henni. He explained to us how the exhibition was set up Performing Colonial Toxicity, in which—in collaboration with the Higher Technical School of Architecture of Valencia—she is developing a research and exhibition project that investigates the impact of the nuclear tests conducted by France in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966, a period during which the French colonial regime detonated four atmospheric atomic bombs and thirteen underground nuclear bombs.
He does so through available materials, curated and filtered through an immersive multimedia installation, the result of research into the legacy of the nuclear tests conducted by France in the Algerian Sahara. To take this emotional journey to the Algerian Sahara, Henni brings to light a past that is “still in the present” and that also speaks to the “irreversible future” of radioactivity. “It’s a long-term issue that will persist for many years; scientists estimate the half-life of radioactivity to be around 240,000 years. The colonial past shapes the present and future of populations in Africa and around the world. Radioactivity travels freely—it knows no borders.”
In the exhibition, a series of “audiovisual and architectural” stations form the path that visitors follow, giving them the opportunity to delve into Algeria’s colonial past without ever leaving Aguas Internacionales.
The exhibition, which has been shown in Amsterdam, London, and Paris, features a journey organized in the form of “audiovisual and architectural stations that visitors physically pass through.” As highlighted by Aguas Internacionales in Performing Colonial Toxicity “The multimedia installations trace the spatial, atmospheric, and geological impacts of French atomic bombs in the Sahara. By experimenting with different methods of spatialization and information circulation, Henni—rather than presenting a closed narrative—connects what has been documented with what remains absent, censored, or inaccessible, revealing how colonialism also operates through territory, architecture, extraction, and pollution.”
The exhibition is open to the public through November 1
Thank you to Alejandro Campos and Paula Lacomba for doing such a great job organizing this event in the city!