WINTER BLOOM SOLO SHOW
April 2021, WORLDWILDE SPACE
Tunis, Tunisia
PHOTOS BY POL GAILLARD
Winter Bloom is Souheila Ghorbel’s first solo show in April 2021. An eponymous book was released through Local Groupe, an independent publishing house. Drawn to
emotions, the 29 years old photographer captured intimate moments with nature,
celebrating hope and life. While her photographs are mostly snapshots of her
fascination with plants, her gaze has somehow been impacted by her encounters
with people, and mostly nourished by her exchanges with the florists of
Tunisia.
Winter Bloom has us wandering in Souheila’s universe, with our heads turned to the sky for most of the journey. She shot using a flash which resulted in a peculiar photography series of almost surrealistic or synthetic species. Her photographs almost appear to be collages and our eyes are searching in vain for details that would confirm the use of a creative software.
Winter Bloom (Al Layali Essoud الليالي السود in arabic) refers to that period stated in the berber calendar from the 14th of January to the 2nd of February during which vegetation awakens from its hibernation state and starts blooming entering a new cycle, just like us humans go through emotional turmoil or sleeplessness before rising again and blossom.
In November 2021, Winter Bloom appeared as an artist-led response to the complexities of the climate emergency in the MENA region for the Liverpool Arab Art Festival.
Winter Bloom has us wandering in Souheila’s universe, with our heads turned to the sky for most of the journey. She shot using a flash which resulted in a peculiar photography series of almost surrealistic or synthetic species. Her photographs almost appear to be collages and our eyes are searching in vain for details that would confirm the use of a creative software.
Winter Bloom (Al Layali Essoud الليالي السود in arabic) refers to that period stated in the berber calendar from the 14th of January to the 2nd of February during which vegetation awakens from its hibernation state and starts blooming entering a new cycle, just like us humans go through emotional turmoil or sleeplessness before rising again and blossom.
In November 2021, Winter Bloom appeared as an artist-led response to the complexities of the climate emergency in the MENA region for the Liverpool Arab Art Festival.
Le Temps de l’amour series
Analog photography
SOUFFLE
Mars 2022,PHILOMENA+
Vienna, Austria
Analog photography
SOUFFLE
Mars 2022,PHILOMENA+
Vienna, Austria
Souffle
Analogue Breathing
An exhibition proposal on neo-analogue photo practices
The unpredictable, the uncontrollable, is what brought Yasmine Belhasse (*1988, Tunis), Walid Ben Ghezala (*1991, Tunis) and Souheila Ghorbel (*1992 Tunis) to analogue photography — it’s the imperfection with which they rebel against the easily optimised world of digital images.
Between the moment the shutter is released and the result is obtained, there’s a window of time that brings with it a deceleration, that gives you time to ‘catch your breath’ (souffle means “breath” in French). Discarded cameras and expired film material are used for experimentation. The ‘random’ images
embrace the mishap and bear witness to a form that should be style-free, but at the same time suggests the style of spontaneous amateur photography. The discolouration of reality and the intentional imperfectionism sometimes have a destabilising and disconcerting effect.
Thematically, the photographic works are located somewhere between anger, rebellion and poetry, introspection as well as ideal fiction, reacting to the harsh reality they feel confronted with, which is often characterised by economic difficulties and a lack of perspective.
Souheila Ghorbel’s contribution to the exhibition presents her circle of friends, exuberant undertakings of young adults who look cheerfully and amusingly into the camera. Yasmine Belhassen’s sensitive eye captures poetic situations in the surrounding landscape on celluloid. Her experimental use of the technique, in addition to the unusual way she plays with colour, creates a harmonious fusion of different images. ...
An exhibition proposal on neo-analogue photo practices
The unpredictable, the uncontrollable, is what brought Yasmine Belhasse (*1988, Tunis), Walid Ben Ghezala (*1991, Tunis) and Souheila Ghorbel (*1992 Tunis) to analogue photography — it’s the imperfection with which they rebel against the easily optimised world of digital images.
Between the moment the shutter is released and the result is obtained, there’s a window of time that brings with it a deceleration, that gives you time to ‘catch your breath’ (souffle means “breath” in French). Discarded cameras and expired film material are used for experimentation. The ‘random’ images
embrace the mishap and bear witness to a form that should be style-free, but at the same time suggests the style of spontaneous amateur photography. The discolouration of reality and the intentional imperfectionism sometimes have a destabilising and disconcerting effect.
Thematically, the photographic works are located somewhere between anger, rebellion and poetry, introspection as well as ideal fiction, reacting to the harsh reality they feel confronted with, which is often characterised by economic difficulties and a lack of perspective.
Souheila Ghorbel’s contribution to the exhibition presents her circle of friends, exuberant undertakings of young adults who look cheerfully and amusingly into the camera. Yasmine Belhassen’s sensitive eye captures poetic situations in the surrounding landscape on celluloid. Her experimental use of the technique, in addition to the unusual way she plays with colour, creates a harmonious fusion of different images. ...
Adnen Jdey
Researcher at Tunis University
Daydream series
Cyclical group show
July 2022, LA MER BLEUE
TUNIS, TUNISIA
Cyclical group show
July 2022, LA MER BLEUE
TUNIS, TUNISIA
POL GAILLARD
The cyclic theory of time has been discussed in religion, human and cosmic history, as well as in our personal lives. The universe we live in allegedly exploded into existence multiple times, and is expected to burst into flames again sometime in the future. As human beings we have noticed very often that history repeats itself, and we, ourselves, go through different patterned cycles. We collapse, build ourselves up only to collapse again and so on and so forth.
Cyclical aims to reflect on artists’ processes both in terms of their practice and their daily routines; of trying and failing indefinitely. Five artists using different mediums have been approached to create one to three artworks in continuation of their current body of work, diving into life cycles often influenced by social and geographic environment, the weather, the moon and the planets.
The core idea of this exhibition is to dive into how our surroundings and their energies affect us individually, but also how the universe collectively affects us through the cyclical magnetic variations we are subject to.
Cyclical aims to reflect on artists’ processes both in terms of their practice and their daily routines; of trying and failing indefinitely. Five artists using different mediums have been approached to create one to three artworks in continuation of their current body of work, diving into life cycles often influenced by social and geographic environment, the weather, the moon and the planets.
The core idea of this exhibition is to dive into how our surroundings and their energies affect us individually, but also how the universe collectively affects us through the cyclical magnetic variations we are subject to.
Wanderlust -The day the prophetess told me about
Analog photograpy printed on canvas
Dailycatessen Group Show
Septembre 2021, RUTTOWSKI;68
Paris, France
Wanderlust -The day the prophetess told me about - 2021
Analog photograpy printed on canvas
Romain Darnaud
Analog photograpy printed on canvas
Romain Darnaud
Wanderlust -The day the prophetess told me about -
Funny story about my artwork for the daily CATESSEN group show in Paris - After reading my horoscope in June I was deeply convinced that I’m going to travel in September unfortunately I couldn’t make it but a piece of me made it.
Daily Cat Essen
Antwan Horfee is a passer-by of art. His free, living gesture, in constant movement, transcends borders in the name of an aesthetic at the edge of the visible and the invisible, beyond the tangible: one of the most restlessly creative force in the world.
Driven by the desire to unite multiple imaginaries, sensitive to the uninterrupted flow of images that spill onto social networks, the unclassifiable visual artist, has thought the group exhibition Daily Cat Essen as a work that we feed each day. Art is a food to be consumed, savored without measure.
The Bells Angels, Vanessa Conte, B Chehayeb, Kaïs Dhifi, Tiziano Foucault-Gini, Souheila Ghorbel, Kingsley Ifill, Prosper Legault, Mrzyk and Moriceau, Mario Picardo, Alexander Raczka, Ataru Sato, dialogue with Antwan Horfee: the narrative oscillates between spontaneity and temporality open to the multi-genre. From Tokyo to Paris, from New York to London, from a drawing to a photograph, through a painting, the subversive, contemporary wandering, at the sources of abstraction or figurative questions time and space, matter and form. The works orient variations and decipher signs around a matrix. Embodying various generations, the artists divert the codes, triturate the representations, transform the impalpable into palpable: "they create atmospheres, sacralize, sexualize works", says Antwan Horfee, the chief curator of Daily Cat Essen. He is a forceful voice at the forefront of this group show.
Alchemy of film, comics, fusion between 8th art, painting and sculpture, Daily Cat Essen, explores the reflection by federating resonances. The public is invited to feed on a show as captivating as it is intriguing.
FUTURE LIGHTS OF THE RISING SUN
Analog photgraphy printed on canvas
BUILDING BLOCKS BY ZAINAB HASOON
Septembre 2021, B7L9
Tunis,Tunisia
“The tempertures are still cold and the sun’s eager to rise. Watch out for the event horizon where everything disconnects then reconnects”
The group exhibition Building Blocks is curated by Zainab Hasoon as part of the B7L9 residency programme.
Zainab Hasoon has brought together Tunisian and visiting artists Achref Bettaieb, Becem Sdiri, Ghad Almajid, Mohamed Sakka (a.k.a Jack Montaly), Jawher Ouni, Souheila Ghorbel, Mo Mezghani (a.k.a. Intrinsic), and Bashar Suleiman (aka Lil Asaf), whose works include painting, video, sound, music, installation, and photography.
‘Cells are the building blocks that compose a body. Each has its own shape and purpose, each growing together to maintain the whole. This image of an organic body composed of individual, dynamic parts that grow together is akin to the process in which this exhibition – Khaliya, or “cell”, the Arabic title of this exhibition – has developed.’
HORIZON DES MIRACLES/MIRACLE DES HORIZONS
ANALOG PHOTOGRAPHY
A collective diary, The Village by Simon Njami, JAOU PHOTO
Octobre 2022, B7L9
TUNIS, TUNISIA
THE VILLAGE
To live an entirely private life means above all to be deprived of things essential to a
truly human life: to be deprived of the reality that comes from being seen and heard
by others, to be deprived of an "objective" relationship with them that comes from
being related to and separated from them through the intermediary of a common
world of things, to be deprived of the possibility of achieving something more
permanent than life itself. The privation of privacy lies in the absence of others;
The village is the far-flung place that you dream of leaving and to which you long to return.
The village is a paradox, a contradiction whose arcana are linked to belonging.
This belonging may sometimes be fantasised, but it inevitably comes down to the notion of roots and land that humans can’t seem to go without. It is a nuclear cell in which the links between people are often family ties. The first villages were formed that way. Then they represented clans, ethnic groups, incestuous cells wherein the outsider was always deemed suspicious. But the village stifles its own inhabitants, starting with the young, who nurture one obsession: to run off and get lost in big city where they can finally enjoy the anonymity that lets you realize yourself and turn into an independent entity. According to Aristotle, “when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be formed is the village.” 2 And herein lies the problem of this reassuring yet suffocating proximity. Nothing can stay secret in the village. Everyone hears everything, knows everything, imagines everything.
It is this mixture of benevolence and surveillance that I have wanted to reproduce in the
B7L9 space. We have recreated a village, with its houses, sandy streets and veiled proximity that cannot hide a thing. But in order to pinpoint what is imagined, the visitor will have to cross the thresholds of all these houses, like an intruder entering a space without being invited, to discover the different forms of intimacy playing out inside them. On the walls (the only open, immediately accessible spaces) there will be a frame – a breathing space open onto the exterior. The awareness of entering somebody’s space and penetrating their life is displayed to remind us (if need be) that regardless of our environment, we should be allowed these exclusive moments where we lay ourselves bare without fear of judgement.
These houses may well be individual but they all belong to a community, as we do as
humans, trying every day to create what is a doubtless an impossible boundary between the public and the private space.
Simon NJAMI
Translated by Gail de Courcy-Ireland