Omar Bey

Omar Bey’s works include paintings, collages and mixed-media assemblages of found objects. He has developed an innovative command of materials that enable him to evoke surprise, humor, and contemplation in viewers.

Bey’s concepts revolve around the paradoxical excess of modern human existence. Each work explores a dissonance that is echoed in its construction with materials that contradict one another. With an interest in defying the unspoken rules of incompatibility, His work is akin to “art brut”. With a practice characterized by the juxtaposition of dense objects with the delicate, Bey’s self-proclaimed “Contrastivist” tendencies are best displayed with pieces where birds eager for flight are bound by wire and fish trapped in nets resemble distant stars, leaving the onlookers oblivious to their plight. Bey’s recent work reflects a more direct and personal engagement with the tensions of his own experiences in Tunisia, transmutable to broader contexts. When reflecting on his oeuvre, Bey investigates our collective complacency within the reality of our mundanity. For him, the dissonance of the earth’s importance and irrelevance ring key to his practice.

Omar Bey graduated from L’Institut Supérieur des Beaux-art in Tunis in 1998, and completed a residency at Cité Internationale des Arts during 2011-2012. His work has been exhibited at various international art fairs in Paris, London, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Fakhri El Ghezal

Fakhri El Ghezal is an independent Tunisian visual artist and filmmaker, whose practice includes silver-based photography, video, painting, drawing and calligraphy, or hybridizations between them. Between 2008 and 2021, he worked as a pyrographic painter under the pseudonym « Ibrahim Màtouss« . From 2016, he practiced calligraphy and tagging under the pseudonym [Weld Hlima].

In El Ghezal’s work, « it’s always about light, manifestation by light and in light », which emerges through devices of buried memory, of traces past and revealed.

His work has been shown at numerous festivals, fairs and international exhibitions, including the Rencontres africaines de la photographie in Bamako, Documenta Fifteen in Kassel, the New Museum in New York, the MUCEM in Marseille and the Centre d’art vivant in Tunis. He has also taken part in the Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia, the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland and the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival in France.

Sonia Kallel

Born in 1973 in Tunis, Sonia Kallel is a visual artist and Assistant Professor at the National School of Architecture and Urbanism. After settling in France, she decided to return to Tunisia in 2005, where she divides her time between her artistic practice and teaching.

Since 2010, she has been interested in disappearing or endangered artisanal know-how. Her projects always begin with encounters and revolve around narratives, interviews, and inquiries into the consequences of heritage, and social and economic changes… Her works take various forms: installations in historically charged places, woven, deconstructed, and recomposed paths, imbued with testimonies, sounds, and videos, sometimes offering immersion in authentic or reconstructed environments.

Her works have been exhibited in France, Tunisia, and internationally.

SHOOF

Child of the Medina of Tunis, Hosni Hertelli – his real name – deconstructs the Arabic alphabet to question the place of language in our contemporary societies.

The movement is lively, repetitive, without hesitation and perfectly rhythmic.

The brush moves almost mechanically over the glass plates which overhang an amphitheatre in the centre of which rise, mysterious and magical at the same time, the voices of the six munshid (Muslim religious singers) of the Al Nabolsy ensemble. 

Using paint, which he dilutes with varying amounts of water, the Tunisian street artist draws fragments of dripping letters.

Drips which paradoxically give the impression that they flow towards the sky. The calligraphy of this self-taught artist is unorthodox.

Marie-josé Armando

At the same time of her studies of plastic arts at  Aix-en-Provence University she does a training course at  the School of Fine Arts of the same city.
She discovers the ceramic at the School of Plastics Arts ( EMAP) of Nice, where she also practises engraving.
She takes part, during two years, to the workshop of ceramic of the International School of Art (EPIAR) in the Villa Arson in Nice.
She collaborates to the Nice’s museums since 1980 : first the Museum of the Fine arts, then from its creation, to the Museum of Modern and contemporary Art (MAMAC), and finally to the Matisse Museum as vice-curator.
In availability since 2005, she shares her time and her work between South of France and Tunisia.
She created, in association with Jean-Claude Villain, the collection  » The Clay’s book »: artists’ books realized completely in clay, with contemporary famous poets of different languages (French, Arabic, Greek, Portuguese, etc.)

Emna Kahouaji

Emna is a Tunisian painter holding a Bachelor’s degree in Painting from ISBAT and a Master’s in Traditional Heritage from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her artistic journey revolves around exploring the ongoing processes of identity formation and negotiation. Kahouaji’s artwork delves into the dynamic nature of selfhood and human experience. Through meticulous brushstrokes and symbolism, her pieces resonate with profound post-structuralist themes, providing viewers with a captivating glimpse into the complexities of identity construction. Kahouaji’s artwork has been showcased in numerous prestigious exhibitions, earning her recognition, such as the Jury Prize at the Festival Chouftouhouna and the esteemed EPI Mentorship Prize from the Emerging African Art Galleries Association. Notable exhibitions include Persona at Aicha Gorgi Gallery, AZAL at AIRE LIBRE Gallery, and displays at the Musée National de Carthage, solidifying her place in the contemporary art scene.

Fatma Charfi Mseddi

Fatma Charfi was born in 1955 into a large family of Maghrebi nautical cartographers from Tunisia. * She was the fifth child and the only daughter of eight and grew up with her seven brothers and mother, Nabiha Ben Cheikh and father, Abdel Raouf Charfi in the city of Sfax. Her artistic career began in 1974 at Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts de Tunis in the capital, Tunis where she studied for her degree in Fine Art. In 1977 she went on to train as a cartoonist in Poland. In 1980 she moved to France and worked on her doctorate in “Artistic Aesthetics” at the Institut d’Estétique et de Sciences de l’Art de Paris | Sorbonne, and in 1985, she was awarded a PhD for her thesis related to the experimentation and the study of water; a year later she moved to Bern, Switzerland to attend the École Supérieure d’Art Visuel de Genève, where she enjoyed an internship.

Photos courtesy of Nabil Mseddi.

Mohamed Amine Hamouda

Mohamed Amine Hamouda joined the El Omrane Arts Pilot High School in Tunis to pursue his education, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in fine arts with a specialization in painting, followed by a master’s degree in aesthetics and techniques of arts from the Higher Institute of Arts and Crafts in Gabès (Tunisia), where he currently teaches.

The work of Mohamed Amine Hamouda explores and studies the botanical, maritime, and natural resources of Gabès to create platforms that document and interpret the threatening situation of biodiversity and the region’s ecosystem due to industrial intervention, aiming to provoke new possibilities and responses to social, environmental, and economic questions.

The exploration of the biodiversity of the southern coast, the examination of Gabès’ flora allowed Mohamed Amine Hamouda to create natural pigments, dyes, and paint colors illustrating his process of revelation, research, and development of artistic practice that studies and documents the nature and cultural heritage of the region. Using painting, collages, and installations and presenting the landscape unity in a new format, the experimenter continually explores the unique oasis ecosystem to create new mediums.

Ali Tnani

graduate of the Higher Institute of Fine Arts of Tunis. Since then, he has frequently participated in international artistic residency programs.

« Trace, Space, Data » are some of the keywords that revolve around Ali Tnani’s artistic practice. This practice leads him to exploit different supports and formats such as photography, drawing, sound installation and documentary film.

He has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in Tunisia and abroad: « Ce vide, Voilà ma réponse » (2022), a solo exhibition at the B7L9 art station – Kamel Lazaar Foundation (KLF), Tunis; « The upshot of trans-affective solidarity », TAM Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles, USA, 2022 and Motorenhalle Centre for Contemporary Art, Dresden, Germany, 2021; « Climbing Through the Tide » (2019) at KLF B7L9 Art Station, Tunis; « A new Humanity » (2018), Dakar Biennale, Senegal; « Unknown program » (2018), a solo exhibition at Elmarsa Gallery, Dubai, UAE. « Architextures de Paysage 1 » (2017), Château d’Oiron, Oiron, France. « Données à voir » (2016), La Terrasse, Espace d’art de Nanterre, France. « If you are so smart, why ain’t you rich? » (2014), Marrakech Biennale, Morocco.

Taher Jaoui

Creating captivating and labor-intensive work with the idea of continuing the legacy of the abstract expressionism movement from the 50s and 60s, Taher Jaoui’s paintings are rich assemblages of layered forms, vibrant colors, and expressive gestures, and mathematics signs and formulas. Applied on canvas through a dynamic interaction, a physical back-and-forth dialogue in which perspective and orientation continuously change until all the elements are balanced right, these opulent creations are the artist’s personal way of expressing himself.
Through a series of spontaneous movements, directly inspired by the way canvas responds to layers of paint and
gestures applied to it, Jaoui compares his work to a dance routine with a familiar partner. While impulsive and unconstrained in its core, familiarity with materials is essential for the creative process which strongly depends on the ability to respond quickly and foresee the way the elements will work together.

Najah Zarbout

After studying at the Higher Institute of Arts and Crafts in Sfax, Najah Zarbout was accepted at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she earned a doctorate in Arts and Sciences of Art. She currently holds a position as an assistant professor at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Sousse.

Najah Zarbout is interested in subjects related to current events, the individual, and contemporary society. Her artistic creations explore the relationship with others in its various aspects. She offers a metaphor for human submission or disobedience and invites the viewer on an imaginary journey through the materiality of paper. Behind her seemingly playful works lie profound and daring subjects. Her artistic practice takes various forms, ranging from drawing to video, photography, and installation. In recent years, she has focused on a cutout approach. From embossing to folding or tearing, in various combinations of light, lines, and cuts, she engages in a dialogue with paper.

In 2018, Najah Zarbout represented Tunisia at the Dakar Biennale in Senegal. In addition to numerous solo and group exhibitions, her work has been featured in several fairs and salons in Tunisia, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Morocco, Kuwait, among others. She is the recipient of the Grand Prix in Plastic Arts at the « Ici et demain » festival in 2008 (France).

Ymen Berhouma

At the age of twenty, she spent around ten years in Europe (Germany, Spain, France) then moved back to Tunis and began studying fashion design. This is where she approaches drawing. Then began to paint and in 2005 exhibited a series on motherhood. Her work, closely linked to her life, questions the place of women-mothers within a stereotypical society that leaves little space for otherness.
The margin, solitude, and disintegration are her privileged themes treated with acrylic, and in rather large formats, they emanate the impression of a human abyss, a world from within to which one could not remain insensitive. Of great expressive force, her paintings grip you with the disintegration of forms and the melancholy that its characters embody.
Her references, different from one series to another, distinguish her from other artists. Sometimes she borrows from the register of classicism, sometimes from a less conventional style. That of an accumulation of scenes, a form of mental map printing the network of her thoughts.

Her current work puts the child at the center and questions the possibility of resuscitation following early life trauma, in an increasingly merciless world.
Her work is part of the collection of the Ministry of Culture in Tunisia and France (DRAC) and in several private collections.

Instagram : @atelierymen

Mira Agdal

Mira Agdal (Anna Latreille Ladoux, Anna Blaszczyk) is an artist of Polish origin. A documentary film director who was studying at the same time Egyptian and Sudanese archeology at the University of Warsaw. As a film-maker she participated in many international festivals. For the moment she lives and works in Tunisia. Her paintings are regularly exhibited at the AGorgi gallery in Sidi Bou Said and meets a unanimous success, both with the press and professionals.