"El Msabb" by Atef Maatallah
with Sabrina Issa, Aziz Ghariani and Arwa Laabidi
Atef Maatallah with Sabrina Issa, Aziz Ghariani and Arwa Laabidi
L'Art Rue
This project is supported by Tfanen - Tunisie Créative, a project to support the strengthening of the cultural sector, funded by the European Union as part of the Programme d'Appui au Secteur de la Culture en Tunisie (PACT) of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs of Tunisia. The project is a collaboration of the EUNIC network (National Cultural Institutes of the European Union), implemented by the British Council.
Videos
El Msabb is a year-long artistic residency of more than 1 year by Tunisian artist Atef Maatallah with Sabrina Issa, Aziz Ghariani and Arwa Laabidi.
"We walk through the maze and then the vision is there, three successive planes, the layers of rubbish, the two walls and the sky. Everything is gigantic. The emergence of gigantism after the narrow streets is striking.
We're going to step into this suspension and create a new one. We will retain the sense of arrival. Within this pause, we imagine a form of harmony running from the earth to the sky, a breach for the eyes. The rubbish will not be forgotten, it will disappear from the ground, but its memory will be engraved and recorded, the painted image of some of it will float on the high walls that dominate the square. Captive between the dust and the clouds, imagined rather than real, they will be a memory.
The place we are dreaming of is a place at the crossroads of memory and fiction.
Public spaces are full of names that invite us to reminisce: Jardins de Carthage, Riadh Al Andalus, le Kram, El Menzah, Mourouj, Beb Bhar... Like relics closing up both what the place may have been at a given moment in its history and what it no longer is, these names inspire us with the name of our space, msabb.
Like the poet of the Jahiliya, who pauses at the remains, noting the departure of his beloved and describing her footsteps, we pause to say what this place in the rue El Kacheckh once was. We recall its past, but we place our hands on its present. Our hands as painters, botanists and architects.
Together, we dream of an organic and mineral heterotopia, a new Eden wedged between concrete and vegetation."
LES BÂTISSEURS DE ATEF MAATALLAH OU LES CLOISONS DÉFAITES, Hypothèses.org, Mohamed Ali Berhouma, 2022
Practical information
From March 2018 to April 2019 dans la médina de Tunis
Duration
13 months
