by Amel Ben Attia
Patria Delenda Est, by Amel Ben Attia
”Already the salt in the hands of the
gravediggers. The dregs, no longer the aroma, of the sea, which is spread over
the conquered city. Everyone forgets the first salt he tasted: now he tampers
with this essence. The world – and even today we see many Carthage violated –
feeds this flame in him to conquer, to kill. The docile sea is his accomplice.
People come; they will be given their share of salt on the plowing of the
wounds. Free at last, they lament over the ash. The salt forever mingled with
the blood of the victims and with the wounded stones which were the work of
man”
Edouard Glissant – Le Sel Noir
Patria Delenda Est is the reflection of the poem, the testament
of civilizations subjected to the will of the powerful.
From Carthage to Phenicia, their similar
stories are repeated each time falling into the tortuous meanders of wars and
reconstructions. In this sound and visual symphony, Past and Present merge
thanks to an imaginary bridge revealing History in its perpetual loop. Thus our
gaze sets down on a genetic nostalgia filled with destruction.
Patria Delenda Est invites itself to Bhar Lazreg, a rough
neighbourhood in the northern suburbs of Tunis which is home to a large
sub-Saharan community. Designed like a circuit, this 1st edition of TuniSphëre
is anchored in this district in a spirit of proximity in order to rally the
local community to contemporary art.
Pushed in their limits, artists from the region, linked by a common
history, sublimate through their different practices this Aeschylean tragedy in
its strength and violence.
As a prelude, a symphony resonates in a wasteland bejewelled with trash.
The Carthage Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hafedh Makni and in an unusual
collaboration the poet Zoufree, , opens the ball with "the fate of
kings", a poetry transposed into tessitura like a complaint of time
and space.
Not far away, another visual symphony
begins in the artists' studios.
Opposite the neighbourhood carpentry
workshop, the first picture rails of Pascal Hachem, an inscription on rolling
pins intrigues: “When it comes to destruction, we have the know-how”.
Through a sarcastic vision, "starred chef" exposes an undeniable
truth: the ability to subjugate power on man and man onto himself.
Pascal Hachem relentlessly criticizes the
relationships of social domination, pushing the thought on the human condition
to its limit. He draws from Ancient Greece, mother of civilizations, and
unearths the myth of Sisyphus in his eternal damnation.
Through embroidery and drawing on parchments
and embroidery drums, in "One's goal" and "Viscous
circle" the artist highlights servility and submission through scenes
of ancient games, materializing Camus' thought on the cycle of the absurd. In
the works of Pascal Hachem, you will have to imagine Sisyphus happy...
He raises awareness for the need to rebel
in the face of the absurd by awarding medals to the artist for his laziness and
to power for his devastating skills in "The players".
He finally invents a readymade of
destruction entitled "The complete manuals" which cancels all the
exposed elaborate designs.
In another chronicle, he reveals the
condition of the Arab woman, vestal of modern times: they are Latifa, Souad,
Ferjania, Myriam and Mercedes in "Fragile wall" , twelve hands.
Tunisian and Lebanese, they embroider their tragedies in the unveiled veil of
the screen, sublimating their memories through the delicacy of the gesture.
And now Larissa Sansour answers Pascal’s
works, with her video installation. Intimate in her artistic practice with the
Palestinian situation, Sansour uses films in a fictional and futuristic way to
reveal a geopolitics charged with tensions, conflicts and dramas.
In "In the future, they ate in
finest porcelain", she invents a resistance group belonging to a
civilization whose purpose is to influence history and claim their fragile
lands in the future hope of reconquering it. Thanks to this strong symbolism,
the artist tells us about the sovereignty of a Palestine forever lost.
The journey continues, between fields of
plastic bags and thatched cottages, and imaginary merges with reality. A
rundown landscape until the entrance to another site where a story of water and
land is played out.
In his immersive video installation
"Of Men, Gods and Mud", Ali Cherri, who explores time shifts between
ancient worlds and contemporary societies, tells the story of a village in
Sudan where a dam forced all the brick artisans into 'exile. All but one, who
resisted the exodus. From mud to brick, he perpetuates his favourite
profession. In the evening, he invents mystical creatures like a prehistoric
man, sublimating his death in his cave paintings.
Through the story of this Prometheus, who
calls for resistance to ensure sustainability, Cherri, in an imaginary deluge,
invokes the myths by rallying them to existence.
On the left, in the alley, opposite a
public dump, the trail leads to another site where regeneration converses with
revolt.
Wesam Al Asali's work reveals the
rehabilitation of ancient artisanal food preservation techniques in a
devastated Syria. In his practice, Al Asali explores the role of culture and
society in rethinking cities in the context of wars and climate change. In
"Urgent Sustenance" and in the footsteps of the first sedentary
resident of Çatal Höyük who designed his habitat around his food, the artist
reveals the ingenious combinations between present and past when identity
mimicry becomes a necessity for subsistence.
To answer this act of resistance, M'barek
Bouhchichi, through his conceptual materialism, manifests an absolute
conviction in the redemptive potential of matter, and invites us to feel the
delicacy of the words in his work "Poetry must not perish. Because
then, where would be the hope of the world" Leopold Sedar Senghor.
Bouhchichi materializes the politically charged Tunisian poem that he inscribes
with flints on tribulums, an ancestral tool of agriculture. By symbiotically
linking poetry to poïetics, he unearths a denied intangible heritage.
Faced with rebellion, Thameur
Mejri identifies parallels in the paradoxes of the human being - violence, innocence,
guilt, shame - and replaces his palette of bright colours with black and white.
In this Manichaeism, he transforms his painting into organized chaos. Between
fear and anguish, he paints while screaming noiselessly. Iconic symbols of
Tunisia and futile everyday objects are drawn in the turmoil of an uncertain
future.
The song of Mohamed Iguerbouchène comes
next, in the video by Zineb Sedira which highlights the deterioration of the
heritage of her country by taking the Algerian film industry of the 1960s and
its rise as a base for her research. In her practice, Sedira first draws from
her own identity as a woman in a singular personal geography. In "Mise
en scène 2019" she creates a collage with deteriorated reels that she
found during her research on the Algerian cinematographic heritage, and where
we see extracts of Algerian political action and other old sequences difficult
to decipher. This rescue attempt that Zineb Sedira undertakes reveals the
consequences of the deterioration of the political and economic situation in
Algeria, like the state of the archives.
Further on, in Malek Gnaoui's studio, the
so-called clandestine emigration is exposed. Gnaoui draws on the socio-cultural
issues of Tunisia to reveal a violent and bitter reality. In a first work, he
reappropriates the Tunisian flag through a patchwork of emigrants' clothes and
raises the existential question of the meaning of life. In a second work, he
invites expelled people to remember their journeys at sea by tracing imaginary
paths on the sand: these Ulysses tell the Odyssey of despair, which the artist
immortalizes in lead. Finally in his latest installation, a security gatehouse
where we take a peek at an aquatic environment through a porthole, the artist
stages a shipwreck that we can guess through personal objects that deliver an
abyss of the desperate youth.
Alongside Malek Gnaoui, Nidhal Chamekh
takes over with an installation that deals with exile. In his practice, he
dissects contemporary identity in its violence and trauma based on history,
socio-politics and his own experience. In the work "France, you mistreated
me", the artist offers neon writing in the colours of the French flag
which sings of the exile through a lyric of a popular Tunisian song, in three
words فرنسا شومتي حالي and disillusion marries nostalgia for the
country…
Patris Delenda Est ends with a minimalist performance as a curatorial signature.
“Song of a Brutal Land 5/5” is five
players against five others in an endless football game.
In Bhar Lazreg, sub-Saharan migrants from
the neighbourhood try throughout the performance to score goals on goals closed
by fences.
Through this staging, I want to start the debate around Tunisia’s belonging
to Africa and around the South-South migration issues by highlighting racism, a
problem that has recently reappeared through the sudden expulsion sub-Saharan
migrants.
Patria Delenda Est, complaint of tortured geographies and lands in salt, resonates with
the fight that everyone must fight to hope for another dance with beauty. This
beauty full of the understanding of the Whole World and of oneself, in the face
of the pain and the absurdity of the submissions that mark the history of
everyone.