Born in Moscow to a Russian mother and an Algerian father, Louisa Babari grew up in Moscow and Algiers. A graduate of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales de Paris in Contemporary Studies, Russian Language and Cinema, she lives in Paris.

Her artistic practice is made up of video works, photographic and sound installations, graphic works and sculptures. Her pieces activate forms and discourses linked to aesthetic and social changes in the former socialist countries, resistance and independence struggles, the exploration of her family archives, phenomena of displacement, and questions linked to the body, architecture, literature and translation.  In 2014, her work led to a publication, edited by Alberto Garcia Alix for his Madrid-based publishing house, Cabeza de chorlito. Since 2015, she has been carrying out research and producing a body of images on the transformations linked to architecture and the history of buildings in Algeria, Senegal and Mali. In Vietnam, she is producing a series of photographs on the abandonment of old houses by villagers, which will be acquired by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques in 2021.

Her sound pieces, which explore the relationship between the voice and literary production, create immersive and discursive spaces and focus on poetry. In 2018, for the XIII Dakar Biennale, she created Voix Publiques, a sound installation and a programme of pan-African poetry which, intended for the public space, supports African literary production.

Her work has been exhibited and distributed at the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Mac Val, the Kadist Foundation, the David Roberts Art Foundation, the Musée du quai Branly, the Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée and the Dakar Biennale. She occasionally contributes to art and opinion magazines. In 2016, her work was selected for the Prix des Amis du Palais de Tokyo with a multilingual video corpus on Frantz Fanon’s medical experience in Algeria. In 2018, she was awarded the Roberto Cimetta Fund grant with the Pan-African Poetry Programme. In 2021, she was awarded the Mondes Nouveaux research and production grant from the French Ministry of Culture. In 2023, she won the AWARE Prize for women artists.