Meeting of Minds: Jaou Tunis is creating a gathering point for artists

Work by Lydia Saidi on show in Assembly at Jaou Tunis 2024. All installation shots © Mehdi Ben Temessek

The Tunisian festival seeks to connect the SWANA region and its creatives with the diaspora, reflects Taous Dahmani, who curated two shows at this edition – Unstable Point and Assembly

“If I put my academic cap on, I would say the need to work in that region started with the decolonial and post-colonial subject,” says Taous Dahmani. “Decentralising the art world, decentralising where the conversation is happening, decentralising where exhibitions are happening. There’s a long legacy in South East Asia – Kochi-Muziris, Guangzhou, Shanghai, etc – and of course also on the African continent, with the vibrancy of scenes flourishing in Lagos, Dakar, Bamako and so on. Tunis would aspire to follow these important ‘Other’ capitals of the arts and photography. 

“On a more personal level, there’s the urge to give back to a specific region and community,” she continues. “And as someone from Algerian heritage who grew up in Europe, there’s something quite refreshing and soothing to not be constantly trying to explain your position, prove that it matters, constantly explain, constantly provide subtitles. In the West, when you come from ‘elsewhere’ you have no right to opacity, as Édouard Glissant phrased it.”

We’re discussing Jaou Tunis, an art biennale currently on show in the Tunisian capital, for which Dahmani has curated two shows. Themed Resistance as the Deepest Form of Love and including nine exhibitions in total, Jaou Tunis has a heavy (though not exclusive) emphasis on photography and lens-based media, and a commitment to artists and issues from the Global South and its diaspora. Rima Hassan’s photography project Fragments of a Refuge – Fragments of Home, curated by Kenza Zouari, focuses on Palestinian refugees for example, while Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s The Song Is the Call and the Land Is Calling, includes a multi-channel audio-visual installation, sculpture and textiles, and was started during the Arab Spring and Tunisian Revolution.

The Song Is the Call and The land is calling by Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, on show at Jaou Tunis 2024

Dahmani’s exhibitions are titled Unstable Point and Assembly, and are both group shows; Unstable Point is inspired by a quote by sociologist Stuart Hall, stating; “Identity is formed at the unstable point where the ‘unspeakable’ stories of subjectivity meet the narratives of history, of a culture”. It includes 12 artists from Africa, SWANA, and their diaspora, all of whom were invited to take part via an Open Call – Lina Geoushy, Adam Rouhana, Yasmine Belhassen, Ethel Aanyu, Louisa Babari, Ilias Bardaa, Jasmin Daryani, Sameer Farooq, Amina Kadous, Maram Nairi, Mobolaji Ogunrosoye, and Farren Van Wyk Farren.

“I suggested we do the call because we wanted to focus on emerging artists,” says Dahmani, who is French-British-Algerian, and now based in London. “It was a great way to discover new practitioners but also see patterns and recurring themes that we could then weave together. I’ve been living with this quote from Stuart Hall for a while, it always spoke to me, partly because of who I am and ultimately because of what I care about. There’s this constant friction and tension between being able to become someone, to have this intimate sense of self, and being constantly reminded of the context of a culture, of a history, of a social-political context. And I guess the artists I invited to join me grapple with exactly that in their own unique way.”

Dahmani adds that the location of Unstable Point also influenced her curation, as it is installed outside on the busy, central Habib Bourguiba Avenue. Tunisia has a strong outdoor culture, she explains, but showing work in the street means competing against advertising hoardings, street signs, and many other attention-sucking aspects of everyday life. “I kept saying to the artists, we are no longer thinking about a white cube gallery or fine-art context,” she laughs. “It’s a really different way of thinking.”

Work by Adam Rouhana on show in Unstable Point at Jaou Tunis 2024
Work by Amina Kaddous on show in Unstable Point at Jaou Tunis 2024
Work by Ethel Aanyu on show in Unstable Point at Jaou Tunis 2024

“There’s something quite refreshing and soothing to not be constantly trying to explain your position, prove that it matters, constantly explain, constantly provide subtitles.”

This insight fed into Dahmani’s other exhibition, Assembly, which is housed in a private warehouse clad in a huge photograph by Zied Ben Romdhane. “It took three or four months just to clear and prepare the building,” she says. “But as soon as I saw its façade I knew I wanted to cover it with a large-scale photograph, and Zied Ben Romdhane’s image made sense with the show. I think it occurred to me [to do it] because I was working on both exhibitions simultaneously – I was thinking in super-large scale [for the open-air show] then back down to gallery size. But I was also talking with the team about accessibility, making people aware we were there, appeal, curiosity.”

Assembly centres on historic and more contemporary uprisings in the SWANA region, including the Tunisian Revolution in 2011 – when longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted from power – and Algeria, Egypt, Palestine, and Iran. In the works on show “what we take away is not just the events that became of political significance, but the way in which bodies that gather – or attempt to gather – in public spaces constitute a form of political action in their own right,” Dahmani writes in her introductory text and, in addition to Romdhane, the exhibition includes work by Abdo Shanan, Ghyzlène Boukaïla, Hichem Driss, Joyce Joumaa, Lydia Saidi, Mahasen Nasser-Eldin, Mashid Mohadjerin, and Nermine Hammam.

These artists work in photography and more widely in lens-based media; Boukaïla is an Algerian film-maker and multimedia artist, for example, who showed an installation titled Red Manifesto which immerses viewers in images. Dahmani’s curation, assisted by Imen Bahri, also puts the emphasis on an immersive experience, and worked to embrace physical space. The warehouse has a huge central void into which visitors are naturally compelled to look, for example, so Dahmani decided to suspend large prints in it by Lydia Saidi. “That’s why it was so important for me to see the warehouse before even thinking about the layout,” she says. 

“Lydia has described the ‘Hirak’ [which means ‘mouvement’ in Arabic] as a suspended moment in Algeria – a potential revolution which was not expected, and which she doesn’t expect to happen again. It was like a hopeful bubble, so I thought, ok let’s literally suspend the work. That feeling Lydia had is one that’s shared by most of the works on display – we don’t really know how or why [revolutions] start (and end) on that day and not another one, but there are these moments of gatherings, of energy, and then we tend to forget about them. This show tries to remember.”

Assembly at Jaou Tunis 2024, in a warehouse clad in an image by Zied Ben Romdhane
Assembly at Jaou Tunis 2024, curated by Taous Dahmani
Ghyzlène Boukaila's Red Manifesto, on show in Assembly at Jaou Tunis 2024

For Dahmani it felt particularly relevant to talk about these moments in Tunisia, where president Kais Saied was re-elected on 06 October with some 91 per cent of the vote. Younger Tunisians do not remember the revolution of 2011 and say they feel they missed this moment, Dahmani observes; she hopes they will “see their own agency” via this exhibition. Featured artist Driss described to Dahmani how, “the presidential portrait was everywhere in Tunisia; this omnipresent force and power was then torn apart during the revolution”, and that insight is at the core of his series. Dahmani adds that; “This rejection of narrative through images, or politics through images, was something I wanted to take into account”. 

In this, Unstable Point, Assembly, and Jaou Tunis are perhaps part of a wider effort in Tunisia – and beyond. Founded by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation in 2012 and organised in partnership with the French Institute since 2022, Jaou Tunis “serves as a bridge that unites local and international creators, fostering critical reflections on universal themes and celebrating the transformative power of cultural métissage”, as the official release states. Partly that’s helping create a local infrastructure of people and skills, as well as physical spaces such as the warehouse, and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation’s B7L9 Art Station. Less tangibly, it’s creating a network of artists and curators in Tunisia and beyond. 

At the festival opening there was a sense of excitement among the artists, says Dahmani, some of whom find it hard to exhibit in the SWANA region – but who have also, over the last year, seen opportunities in the West dry up. “There was a real sense of meeting each other, sharing ideas, and grieving together,” she reflects. “There was a sense of OK, so we are celebrating the opening of these shows – which could feel futile compared to what’s going on in that region right now, but instead felt empowering. It was deeply emotional and liberating in gathering, in thinking and feeling together.” 

The exhibitions at Jaou Tunis are open until 09 November www.jaou.tn