Village Artisanal

TAGHORI
Viusal Essay

In architectural plans of Djerbian pottery workshops, squares, and circles stand for the working space (square) and for the oven (circle). In the Kvadruk font, various combinations of squares and circles represent letters. In her visual essay, Nour experiments with a poem set in Kvadruk, developing shifting shapes and constellations, composing a visual stream that contains information, but can’t be read. The piece includes a poem written and spoken by Jamel Ben Maamer, performed in Tunisian Arabic and Chelha Amazigh, linking oral tradition to visual encoding.

Nour Najar is home in Guellala. The identity of her hometown is closely intertwined with a long-standing history of pottery, rooted in the Amazigh cultures. As an architect, she studied the architecture of her home island, facing difficulties finding reliable sources about the heritage of the pottery. The artwork reflects on the lack of information and knowledge on the history of the Guellala earthware. The artwork is titled “Taghori,” meaning “clay” in Chelha, one of the Amazigh languages in Tunisia. In Djerba, “Taghori Dassah” translates to “strong clay”; it is a key metaphor for the Djerbian identity.

Nour selected the following passage of a poem by Sheikh Naji Bin Ali Al Hadri: “Even if it merged again with the clay and united with the water, sinking into it, it will rise as light.” Set in the Kvadruk, it acts as the raw material of the animation — singled out into the elements or woven into structures or words, straight or distorted, still or moving. She thematizes the dynamic relationship of language, script, and architecture, of landscape and building materials. She develops a graphical stream of information that can not be decoded.

The Kvadrug typeface was developed by Svetha Gruda, aka Nikola Milenović, a Serbian type designer. His type fonts reflect on the relationship of text and form, on content and visual expression. With a focus on geometric forms, he develops fonts that can transform from text to form to sculpture ot architecture. He refers to traditions such as embroidery, knitting, or weaving in which patterns can be an aesthetic vocabulary and a content container. He develops fonts that can transform into sculpture and architecture. Nour Najar worked with it to generate the raw material for the large-scale projection.

MUSEUM GUELLALA

BACKGROUND

Nour El Ain Najar is an emerging artist. Her artistic work spans from architecture studies to digital animations. Her artistic approach reflects a blend of tradition, architecture, and modern media art, contributing to the cultural scene in Tunisia’s south.

EXHIBITIONS

2024 Houmt Souk (tn), SEE DJERBA

STUDIES

2025 Sidi Bou Said (tn), ENAU: BA

BIO

Lives in Djerba.

LINK

@nournajar_

FEATURED IMAGE

Nour El Ain Najar. SEE DJERBA Houmt Souk 2025. Photo: Wassim Ben Aissa.

Village Artisanal

SAKAN Corporeal Space
Videoessay
2-Channel Projection
2025 (site-adapted)

The video installation SAKAN is based on footage that engaged with the Skanès pavilions in Monastir (tn), a modernist complex designed in the 1960s by architect Olivier-Clément Cacoub. Originally intended to accommodate the growth of Tunisia’s coastal tourism industry, the pavilions embodied post-independence modernisation efforts, blending functionalist principles with regional inflections. With their subsequent abandonment, these structures became emblematic of the unresolved legacy of modernist architecture in North Africa.

Rather than documenting the site as a ruin, FYMA reactivated its spatial and historical potential through a choreographic intervention. Yosri Souissi, a male dancer, navigated the remains of the complex, using the architectural surfaces as points of contact, resistance, and orientation. The body operated here as a seismographic device, registering both the material traces of a fading architectural utopia and the immaterial presence of past lives linked to the site. The work thus explored the body’s capacity to act as an instrument of memory, transforming the deserted pavilion into a space of temporary reinhabitation.

The two-channel installation format, projected within a semi-open industrial building at the Village Artisanale, reinforced this dialectic between body and architecture. By situating the projections on opposing walls, the installation created a spatial dialogue that enveloped the viewer, mirroring the film’s exploration of resonance between corporeality and structure. The incorporation of site-specific sound elements — including environmental noises, echoes, and the flight of bats — further emphasized the porosity between filmed architecture and the live conditions of the projection space.

Video (Detail): Yosr Ammar

In academic terms, FYMA demonstrated how performance and moving image can constitute a methodological tool for reading architectural heritage. The work located itself within broader discourses on the temporality of modernism, the aesthetics of ruin, and the sensory dimensions of spatial experience. By foregrounding the ephemeral gestures of the dancer against the enduring surfaces of concrete, FYMA articulated a critical reflection on memory, decay, and cultural continuity.

In this way, FYMA did not propose a nostalgic return to a bygone modernist ideal. Instead, it presented the pavilions as dynamic sites of negotiation, where histories of architectural ambition, abandonment, and embodied reappropriation intersected. Through its transdisciplinary approach, the work reframed forgotten modernist heritage not as loss, but as a living archive capable of generating new forms of knowledge and sensorial engagement.

MUSEUM GUELLALA

BACKGROUND

The artistic tandem FYMA, formed by Feriel Mesbah and Yosr Ammar, grew out of a shared training in architecture at the National School of Architecture and Urbanism (ENAU) in Sidi Bou Saïd. Their collaborative practice emerged from a sustained engagement with questions of space, materiality, and temporality, expanding architectural thinking into a transdisciplinary field where performance, film, and installation intersected. Rather than considering architecture as a fixed form, the duo positioned it as a dynamic framework for embodied experience and critical inquiry.

FERIEL MESBAH

STUDIES

Since 2021 Sidi Bou Said (tn)
National University of Architecture and Urban Planning (ENAU): Studies of Architecture

School of Design (ESSTED): BA Interior Design

BIO

Lives in Tuins (tn)
2000 Born in Tunis (tn)

YOSR AMMAR

STUDIES

Since 2021 Sidi Bou Said (tn)
National University of Architecture and Urban Planning (ENAU): Studies of Architecture

BIO

Lives in Tunis (tn)
2002 Born in Tunis (tn)

FEATIRED IMAGE

FYMA. SEE DJERBA Houmt Souk 2025. Photo: Wassim Ben Aissa.

SUPPORT

ELYSSA c/o Institut Français Tunisie

Village Artisanal

Bleu regard / Gaze in Blue / الغزرة الزرڨة
Animation
1 minute
Sound: Hamza Siala

Using an archive photograph taken in Djerba in the 1960s, we isolated a child’s gaze, tinted the image in cyan, then created a continuous motion video sequence: a slow, hypnotic zoom in on his eyes, until we dive into the blue pixels, as if into the depths of the sea. A gaze that transcends time and seems to question the photographer… and us, today. Then, the zoom out brings us back to the surface.
This video explores the link between memory, transmission and water – a vital resource, symbolic matter, and interface between the visible and the invisible. The colour cyan evokes both the old photographic technique (cyanotype) and the sea that surrounds Djerba, which is at once nourishing, fragile and changing.
The soundscape combines the slow surf of the sea, a distant breath and a child’s cry, like a reminiscence of this living past.
‘Bleu regard’ is a sensitive attempt to revive a frozen image, to breathe life into it, and to make heard what the archives do not say. It is also a way of questioning the persistence of the gaze — from the child of yesterday to the artist of today — in the face of the transformations of the territory.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

My artistic practice is rooted in the desire to share a vision that is both personal and collective, through site-specific and socially engaged works. Whether through ephemeral installations, photographic interventions, or participatory performances, I seek to open up poetic dialogues in public spaces. From See Jerba to UV Sousse, via Dream City and Interference, I question the memory, identity and social ties that shape our shared environments.
As a committed artist, it is this stance that motivates me to apply today, proposing a collaborative work with a young architecture student.

Mouna Siala

Born in Paris in 1973, Mouna Jemal Siala is a multifaceted visual artist who lives and works in Tunis. With a PhD in Arts and Art Sciences from Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University, she has been developing a committed practice since 1993, combining photography, installations, video, embroidery and digital arts.
Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions and biennials in Tunisia, France (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, etc.), Germany, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, India, the United States, West Africa, the Middle East and the Maghreb. In 2010, she received the Senegalese Minister of Culture Award (Dak’Art) and the National Merit Award in the fields of Literature and Arts (Tunisia).
Her art articulates the digital, the virtual and the real. She questions personal and collective narratives, intimate and social memory, by multiplying points of view. Her life and her art are inextricably linked.
Her work explores silent transmission, forgotten oral traditions and forms of poetic resistance through language, matter and Mediterranean memory.

Hamza Siala
Born in Tunis in 2003, Hamza Siala is an architecture student at ENAU with a passion for art, particularly photography. His photo ‘Porte des cieux’ was recently published in FOVEA magazine No. 5.

LINKS
mounajemal.tn
https://www.instagram.com/mouna_jemal_siala/
https://www.instagram.com/hamza__siala/

Old Town Center

Photo Collage
Projection 16:9

What I aim to do with these photos is to select the ones that could inspire me the most, then to use them digitally and express the concept of “where we lived shaped what we’ve become”.
The idea is to create three photo-compositions that create a contrast between the complexity of one’s expression/activity and the softness of beautiful landscapes/ places. My purpose is to highlight the impact of the emotions and the nostalgia of a place felt by the ones who live in it. These compositions will be printed in A3 horizontal format, each.

BACKGROUND

Marwen is a Senior Art Director with over ten years of experience in graphic design and illustration. Throughout his career, he’s worked on a wide range of digital and 360° advertising campaigns, blending sharp conceptual thinking with a strong visual craft.
His tools have always been the pen, the brush, and the Adobe Suite — and more recently, AI has joined the mix. He believes in ideas that connect, visuals that speak, and always staying curious about what’s next.

BIO
Lives in Tunis

LINKS

Instagram.com/marwen.baccouche/