how would you describe the deepest form of love?
Thoughts on protest, solidarity and resistance at Jaou Biennale in Tunis.
Welcome to dear midnight, my newsletter with reflections on all things photography, publishing and the artistic process. In these fortnightly emails you will read about the material I encounter while working on my own art practice and Foam Magazine.
I’m in Paris this weekend and finally got my hands on a copy of Flashpoint! by 10x10 Photobooks at Polycopies the non-profit festival for the distribution and promotion of independent photographic publishing. The title has been on my wish list for some time, as it touches on many relevant themes that stimulated conversations I’ve had recently. I hope you will find this interesting, and would be really thankful if you helped spread the word about Dear Midnight.
After returning from Arles earlier this year I searched for more care and relevance in curating, and I’m glad to say I found it last month at Jaou Biennale, an art festival in Tunisia’s capital themed resistance as the deepest form of love. The programme wove together expressions of solidarity, grief and hope, carving out a place for connection in times of despair and displacement.
The last time I found myself in North Africa is over a decade ago, when my parents moved to Cairo for work in 2010. Having just finished high school I spent as much time there as I could and the city quickly became a familiar place. During one of my visits in early 2011 we witnessed the beginning of a revolution that was later coined the Arab Spring. Ignited by the anti-authoritarian protests taking place in Tunisia around that time, Egyptians, who were equally frustrated with the government, took to the streets and protested against corruption, police violence and injustices on Tahrir Square. Mobilised and amplified by Facebook the crowd got bigger and louder by the day, animating hundreds of thousands of people to join the cause. With each day that passed the police hit back more brutally which meant that the confrontations became increasingly fatal. I remember feeling the tension and uncertainty all the way into the suburbs, where we remained with eyes glued to the television for updates on AlJazeera like many other families. The small square screen being our main source of information, yet never quite revealing the full picture.
On one of our trips to stock up on petrol, which was becoming sparse, we saw a colony of trucks carrying camels into the city centre. That day the government sent men on horse and camel back into town to violently shut down the gatherings on Tahrir Square, killing dozens of protestors. The news travelled across every corner of the region like thunder, leading to uprisings and anti-government protests in other SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa) countries like Lybia, Algeria, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain over the following decade - the effects of which can still be felt until this day. I draw this connection because it is important to consider the larger regional context surrounding resistance and liberation movements when navigating the themes discussed at Jaou Tunis this year.
1: Context
An old wooden shed, appropriately located in the heart of Tunisia’s capital on the Rue de Palestine, was transformed into the venue for a group exhibition called Assembly. The facade holds an oversized photograph of a demonstrating crowd with fists raised high, which acts like a membrane between street and exhibition, or individual and crowd.
Bringing together nine artistic voices from the SWANA region, the grouping offers viewers insights into different moments and forms of protest through the personal lenses of Abdo Shanan, Ghyzlène Boukaïla, Hichem Driss, Joyce Joumaa, Lydia Saidi, Mahasen Nasser-El din, Mashid Mohadjerin, Nermine Hammam and Zied Ben Romdhane.
‘In the exhibited works, 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’ says curator Taous R. Dahmani in her exhibition statement. As viewers we are attuned to consider both the strength in numbers, and also imagine other forms of protest that may be smaller but no less impactful.
Suspended from the ceiling and pointing in various directions, the work of Algerian documentary photographer Lydia Saidi can be seen from every vantage point of the space - akin to posters that stand out in crowds of demonstrators. In her work Saidi reflects on the concept of freedom, and what motivates people to overcome their social realities to achieve it.
Her images show scenes of protest in recent Algerian history from within the crowd, but the lens through which we witness almost feels mechanical. The shades of blue that cover the demonstrators creates the aesthetic of heat cameras, often used for night vision by the military. In my reading this subtle intervention works two ways; on the one hand it creates an abstraction that unites the crowd in anonymity, but on the other hand it holds critique towards the cold treatment of protesting civilians by the police.
After climbing up to the mezzanine I head towards the backside wall where a set of delicately installed prints by the Egyptian artist Nermine Hammam pull my attention. Enmeshed in the imagery of a traditional Japanese silk screen I recognise the infamous camel rider from Tahrir Square. The image had been picked up by the media and became iconic because of its symbolic strength and reference to historical wars.
‘In this work I question our ability to blind ourselves to violence through distance and perspective. I try to probe the power of the mass media to entirely detach us from horror through the endless replication of imagery. (…) In fact, it is the very act of creating iconic images that detaches, and desensitizes us from the original violence that it depicts.’ With this statement Hammam places the image in a larger context, addressing the saturating effect when imagery is mass-circulated.
context the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood
The work Freedom is Not Free creates a visual context for historical happenings by subtly weaving together word and image. Mashid Mohadjerin is an Iranian-Belgian photographer and visual artist whose artistic practice has a foundation in social activism.
The body of work focuses on the private and public world of Iranian women who grew up after the Revolution of 1979, including places of significance from the artist’s childhood. Printed on textile sheets the accompanying text and collages create a visual vocabulary to capture the atmosphere and key moments in the life of several generations of women in her family.
Presented as a kind of investigative research the artist draws connections between family archives, newspaper headlines and imagery that circulated in the media at that time.
These visual clusters give context to the signifiers that shaped the experience of different generations of women. By interweaving the personal and political with each other, they show how closely our individual identity is connected to the collective.
2: Connection
Quick coffee stop, a strong cup with a full pack of sugar, then I make my way through the midday sun and bump into some familiar faces on the main boulevard. Together we continue to my next stop: an outdoor exhibition assembled along the famous Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the first exhibition in a public space in Tunisia as I learn later.
Unstable Point, also curated by Taous R. Dahmani, offers a companion show to Assembly and brings together a sequence of small pavilions showing twelve artists from, or based in, the African continent and South-West Asia: Ethel Aanyu, Louisa Babari, Ilias Bardaa, Yasmine Belhassen, Jasmin Daryani , Sameer Farooq, Lina Geoushy, Amina Kadous, Maram Nairi, Mobolaji Ogunrosoye, Adam Rouhana & Farren van Wyk. The title of the show is inspired by a phrase from sociologist Stuart Hall, who explained that ‘identity is formed at the unstable point where the 'unspeakable' stories of subjectivity meet the narratives of history, of a culture’.
This quote gets me pondering…when balancing on a tipping point we usually reach out to find support in our surrounding. It means that our sense of belonging and who we are is shaped by those around us, is constructed by those places and people that give us footing.
Ethel Aanyu is a Ugandan artist based in Kampala. For the series Stepping Beyond the Familiar she photographed herself, detached different versions and sat them down next to each other for a conversation. ’The use of different layers is meant to show how our identities are not fixed or permanent since they keep changing with time.’ She describes that what we see in her work is similar to talking to oneself, mentally conversing, in various ways, sometimes in the form of a heated dispute, other times as a gentle conversation.
connection is a relationship in which a person or thing is linked or associated with something else
For the series Trailblazers Egyptian artist Lina Geoushy draws connections to the feminist history of Egypt. Growing up in the 1990s, she was impacted by films from the 1940s and 1960s in which women played powerful leading roles - which stands in strong contrast to the conservative climate of today.
By performing different personas from that time she sheds light on the lesser known feminist narrative, and creates an archive for the women that came before her.
Together, the various parts of this group exhibition form counter-archives and side currents alongside the main stream. By expanding narratives and building new archives and histories along the peripheries they offer a decentralised and decolonial perspective.
3: Decentralisation
The collective Les Chicas de la Pensée describe themselves as a place of resources, critique and revolutionary ideas. They put together programmes that connect through thought, and aim to nurture and build the community of tomorrow. For Jaou Tunis they co-curated the symposium Rebuilding the Future.
There I had the chance of listening to a conversation between two inspiring women, Céline Semaan founder of The Slow Factory and author of A Woman is a School, and May Moumneh from Journal Safar and Al Hayya Magazine. With their respective platforms they create independent outlets for artists, authors and journalists from the SWANA region to be published and distributed internationally.
However, both of them operate from the diaspora due to lack of publishing houses and solid distribution systems in the SWANA region. For example, it is usually cheaper to ship magazines to Europe than to a neighbouring country, which of course limits circulation and reach. Working within Western structures also means catering to those, and that ultimately affects the way stories are framed. The only alternative is to self-publish, which again is difficult due to a precarious funding landscape.
Semaan and Moumneh describe their role in planting seeds for change outside their bubbles, in places where people don’t necessarily agree with them. These seeds are important, but not fully effective without a decentralisation of the broader publishing industry. More distribution networks led by Arab groups on the peripheries are needed to create a mycelium network that expands beyond the centre. In order for this to happen Moumneh emphasised that there needs to be more knowledge distribution about self-publishing.
decentralisation is the process of transferring power, authority, control, and decision-making away from centralised entities to a larger distributed network
Semaan closed the conversation with the encouragement to ‘give yourself permission to exist within your own imagination’ which in my opinion is also a great way to describe what Jaou Tunis does for the photographic world.
Back to Paris, back to Polycopies… I move on to the table of Aka TAWLA a collective for photo book makers from the SWANA region, run by artists Abdo Shanan, Rehab Eldalil, Fethi Sahraoui and Mohamed Mahdy. The platform empowers individuals to share their authentic original narratives, and forming a strong new branch of the expanded publishing mycelium.
If you’ve read this far, thank you and hope you enjoyed! My next letter will reach you in early December. Until then, take care.
x
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