It's a very traditional thing to do, I know, painting one's parents, but I think it could be a lot more than just that – their predicament, their lack of fulfillment, the desperate-not-knowing what they could have had out of life. And their relationship with me.

When people die who one is close to, they go on being alive. It was the same with my father: I went on painting my father laughing, long after he was dead.

My work has always dealt with the autobiographical. In the 1990s I became a mother and I became interested in this idea of transmission. How do you pass on to your children culture and tradition?

Zineb Sedira
Mother Tongue (2002)
Tate