Abstract
This chapter focuses on Tunisian artists Aicha Filali and Sana Tamzini and the Moroccan artist Khadija Tnana as central figures in contemporary and conceptual art in the Maghreb. Their work before and after the uprisings that started in Tunisia in December 2010 has attracted the attention of galleries and critics in their own countries and abroad. This chapter shows how their choices for a new artistic grammar have allowed them to historicize repression, patriarchal violence, and masculine fantasies. No longer striving for beauty, their installations and happenings encourage resistance to cruelty and a confrontation with ugliness, pushing their societies to think and say the unspeakable and to strive for new attitudes and creative orientations. The aesthetic morality conveyed in these artists’ works constructs a new ethics in response to the contemporary context, as had the women artists in the Arab world who developed new languages to express their aims in their particular contexts during the 1940s and 1970s.
To the memory of my colleagues
Noureddine Sraieb,
Moncer Rouissi.
Barbro Klein.
This chapter draws on material developed during my research project, “Women artists in today’s Arab world: creativity and social justice,” at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS), Uppsala, Sweden, 2016–2017.
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Notes
- 1.
Where a reference is not given for a quoted statement, the statement comes from personal communication between the artist and the author. I would like to thank Aicha Filali, Sana Tamzini, and Khadija Tnana for their cooperation throughout this research project.
- 2.
That project led to several publications, among them: Génération des années 30: la mémoire vivante des sujets de l’histoire. Tunis: CERES, Tunis University, 1985. (L. Labidi with A. Zghal); Joudhour al-harakat al-nisa’iyya: riwayaat li-shakhsiyyaat tarikhiyya [Origins of feminist movements in Tunisia: personal history narratives]. Tunis: Imprimerie Tunis Carthage, 1987, republished in 1990 and then in 2009 with one additional personal narrative that had previously been censored, as well as presenting all the personal narratives in Modern Standard Arabic as well as in Tunisian Arabic; and Qamus as-siyar li-lmunadhilaat at-tunisiyaat, 1881–1956 [Biographical Dictionary of Tunisian Women Militants]. Tunis: Imprimerie Tunis Carthage, 2009b.
- 3.
Chedlia Bouzgarou, a political prisoner held by the French colonial authorities in Tunisia, would recite her poems during marriage ceremonies to encourage women to become politically active. See Lilia Labidi. Joudhour al-harakat al-nisa’iyya: riwayaat li-shakhsiyyaat tarikhiyya [Origins of feminist movements in Tunisia: personal history narratives]. Tunis: Imprimerie Tunis Carthage, 2009a. (3rd edition). p. 145–146.
- 4.
Noureddine Sraieb takes the term “secular preachers” (“prédicateurs profanes”) from the Moroccan anthropologist Hassan Jouad, whom he refers to in Revue du monde musulman de la Méditerranée. N 51. 1989. p. 9–10. Research in the social sciences and the humanities only recently began to pay attention to women’s oral poetry in Tunisia, following January 2011 when a festival of “al-Jazel” poetry, with women poets who respond to one another, was organized in a number of cities in 2011. In 2018, Raya Choubani collected, in the company of Megda Mrabet—both of whom were university faculty members—several poems of Mongia Labidi titled Ekbess (Be strong), Tounes Mchat (Tunis is finished), Bint Tounes el Horra (Daughter of Free Tunisia), and Entakhabnek (We elected you), which had a political character related to the democratic transition in Tunisia. On 20 July 2021 Maha Chabbi posted on her Facebook page a video where Mongia Labidi recites her poem Miskina Tounes Miskina (Poor Tunis, Poor) which was seen by 2213 viewers and gathered 208 comments.
- 5.
Soumeya Beltifa (interviewer). “Lilia Laâbidi, psychanalyste et anthropologue. ‘Il est important d’investir dans la formation et la promotion des jeunes, futurs chercheurs de demain.’” (Le Temps, 18 June 2001).
- 6.
Fatima Mazmouz makes the same observation concerning research on art in Morocco. Roger Calme. L’interview/Plasticienne Fatima Mazmouz. Le Temps de se rétablir. https://zoes.fr/2021/12/09/linterview-plasticienne-fatima-fatima-mazmouz-le-temps-de-se-retablir/
- 7.
Alia Nakhli. “L’écrit dans les arts visuels en Tunisie (1960–2015).” Perspective. Actualité en histoire de l’art. (no date indicated). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323518325_L%27Ecrit_dans_les_arts_visuels_en_Tunisie_1960-2015
- 8.
Edward J. McCaughan. “Navigating the Labyrinth of Silence: Feminist Artists in Mexico”. Social Justice. Vol. 34, No. 1 (107), Art, Identity and Social Justice (2007), pp. 44–62. p. 51. This same myopia is seen in Tunisia: in the seven issues of the bilingual Tunisian feminist magazine Nissa that appeared in 1985 and 1986, only one article published in the French language section is devoted to a woman artist, here to Shehrazade Rhaïem on the occasion of an exhibition of her works at the Ettaswir gallery. The article has a brief introduction by Anne Marie Khatib, a photo of the work “Complicité,” and a text by Shehrazade Rhaïem, “Portraits de femmes: Pourquoi Virginia Woolf?” Nissa 2, 1985. p. 5.
- 9.
Fatma Charfi M’Seddi (1955–2018), a Tunisian-Swiss artist, worked in a variety of domains, such as photography, video, installations, happenings, and so on.
- 10.
Museums in the Maghreb devoted to modern art began to appear in the 2000s, with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Algiers (MAMA) inaugurated in 2007 and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Rabat in 2014. There were no associations of women artists in Tunisia. Safia Farhat was member of the executive committee of the UNFT (Union Nationale de la Femme Tunisienne) in 1956, 1958, and 1960.
- 11.
She defended a doctoral thesis in aesthetics and the sciences of art and taught, and for a time was director at the Tunis Higher Institute of Fine Arts. She is currently director of the Radès Center of Living Arts, founded by Safia Farhat and her husband Abdallah Farhat.
- 12.
Among the awards she has received are the UNESCO prize for artisanry in the Arab region in 1994 and the prize awarded by the Tunisian organization CREDIF (Centre de recherches, d’études, de documentation, et d’information sur la femme) in 2005, and she was decorated as Officer of the Order of the Tunisian Republic in 2020.
- 13.
The themes for this series are International Children’s Year (1979), the 20th anniversary of the Association of Blood Donors (1981), the Pilgrimage to Mecca (1981), the Tunisian Red Crescent (1982), the Conference of Plenipotentiaries of the UIT (1982), Palestine (1983), Saluting the Flag (1983), the 4th School of Molecular Biology (1984), and the 3rd Week of Civil Protection (1985). Among a total of 124 artists who have contributed stamps to the Tunisian Post Office, 34 are women.
- 14.
A collection of furniture reinterpreted in response to an invitation from a furniture maker who was celebrating the centenary of its Italian furniture brand, about which Anouar Jerad wrote in the “Introduction” in Univers féminin: meubles et objets présentés dans le cadre de Z.I. EXPO 2005. Organized by Emporio and Gallery Ammar Farhat, February–March 2005.
- 15.
Sidi Bou Said is a town near Tunis known for its role in the art world, Ana/Chroniques. Tunis, Sud Éditions, 2015.
- 16.
Judge Kalthoum Kannou was the only woman among the 70 candidates.
- 17.
This series was very successful among women, both old and young, attracting about 150 million Arab viewers. Harim al Soltan, directed by Meral Okay, deals with the tenth sultan of the Ottoman dynasty (1520–1566) and the intrigues among the favorites of his harem. See Thomas Seibert. Istanbul. “Les spectatrices arabes accros aux séries turques” (24 May 2013).
- 18.
Several of her installations were presented in the catalogue Proximity, produced in partnership with the municipality of Tunis, 2008.
- 19.
“Tata Mbarka” was directed by Naima Zitane (Zitane directed the play ‘Diali’ (“Mine” [women use the term “mine” to avoid using the word “vagina”])). This play has been performed in several cities in Morocco, France, Italy, Belgium, and Tunisia. She also wrote Louiza, her second play, directed by Hamza Boulaiz (a young artist who founded the first theatrical caravan in Morocco), which treats the issue of incest. Her third play, Le mur (The Wall), treats questions related to women and politics.
- 20.
She dedicated this work to Cheikh Nefzaoui, a Tunisian religious figure and author of “The Perfumed Garden,” an erotic manual written in the fifteenth century and designed to transmit sexual education to youth.
- 21.
Ghita Zine. “Interview ‘Kamasutra’, une installation interdite par le Centre d’art moderne” (6 March 2018). https://www.yabiladi.com/articles/details/62479/tetouan-kamasutra-installation-interdite-centre.html
- 22.
Qods Chabaa. Video. “Scandale. Une oeuvre ‘osée’ de Khadija Tnana a été censurée.” (3 March/2018) https://m.le360.ma/culture/video-scandale-une-oeuvre-osee-de-khadija-tnana-a-ete-censuree-158415 le
- 23.
Group manifesto, “Nous, citoyennes et citoyens marocains, déclarons que nous sommes hors la loi “(Le Monde, 9 September 2019) https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2019/09/23/nous-citoyennes-et-citoyens-marocains-declarons-que-nous-sommes-hors-la-loi_6012648_3232.html
- 24.
The exhibit was organized by the Mohammed VI Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMVI) in Rabat, from 23 November 2016 to 8 March 2017, with Rim Laâbi as curator.
- 25.
These Tunisian initiatives came from artists: “Etat d’urgence” appeared between 2016 and 2017; the Chouftouhonna festival, started in 2015 by the association Chouf, is run by a new generation of inclusive feminists, bringing together racial and sexual minorities and welcoming women artists from Tunisia and elsewhere (the festival was suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic).
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Labidi, L. (2023). Women Artists and Contemporary Art in the Maghreb: Insights from the Works of Aicha Filali, Sana Tamzini, and Khadija Tnana. In: Skalli, L.H., Eltantawy, N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Media and Communication in the Middle East and North Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11980-4_26
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