CURATORIAL ESSAY
BY DR. TAOUS DAHMANI
Some days become historic, but on the morning of we decided to take to the streets with a placard, we didn’t know that this decision-action would be contagious, that it would keep growing and would ultimately be remembered. “Enough is enough!” Our voice will be heard and our optimism will not be crushed. Only, the history of popular uprisings is more often than not also a story of broken hearts.
Assembly echoes these individual choices and their transformation into collective outrage. The exhibition revolves around a diversity of cases of citizens gathering in public space.
It is looking at both the long legacy of some of those assemblies, their historical roots and their most recent or contemporary undertakings, the invited artists recount these moments through embodied experiences and personal viewpoints. The assemblies were either lived or inherited. The photographic and filmic works on display trace citizen aspirations and national disillusionments.
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Abdo Shanan, Untitled, from the series A Little Louder (2019-2022)
All images courtesy of the Artists and Jaou Tunis 2024
Zied Ben Romdhane, Ghyzlène Boukaïla, Hichem Driss, Nermine Hammam, Mashid Mohadjerin, Mahasen Nasser-Eldin, Joyce Joumaa, Lydia Saidi and Abdo Shanan act on and reimagine their “civil field of vision” (Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, 2012), the structure through which they understand the interaction between public space and collective visibility.
By examining these movements from the inside, this exhibition traces the often non-linear paths of collective action. They are always cyclical movements, waves that come in and out.
Through nine proposals, we unravel the repetition and transformation of uprisings, continually embodying the resilient spirit of the people involved. This exhibition pays tribute to the history of these acts of claimed visibility and celebrates the visual language chosen to represent citizens’ agency: political intention and its poetic trace.
Zied Ben Romdhane, Untitled, from the series The Escape (2023-2024),
Courtesy of the Artist and Jaou Tunis 2024
All installation views by Mehdi Ben Temessek
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