Jellel Gasteli

Born 1958. Tunis, Tunisia

Lives and works in Tunis, Tunisia

Jellel Gasteli is a prominent photographer whose practice is closely tied to Africa, the Maghreb region, the Mediterranean, the Sahara, as well as to his French-Tunisian heritage. His photographic approach was once grounded in large-scale black-and-white silver prints and transitioned to digital photography through an appropriation of colour. Vernacular walls -the subject of his fascination- are surfaces shaped by time, gesture, and context and serve as both his subject and frame. These fragments of urban façades, found in cities like Tunis, Tangier, Marrakech, and Cairo, carry layers of anonymous, unintentional marks that resonate with the aesthetic sensibilities of certain painters such as Mark Rothko, Nicolas De Stael…etc. He considers photography a form of subtractive abstraction drawn from reality, using it in a strict, unembellished manner to provoke a shift in perception. His artworks are in a constant dialogue with architectural surfaces; walls where successive layers of paint and plaster reveal the transience of time. As new colours overwrite older ones, the materials and hues that are captured in his work are transformed into witnesses of history.

His photographs have been shown at several prestigious exhibition spaces such as the 32Bis, Tunis, Tunisia, Institut du Monde Arabe, and the Museum Für Moderne Kunst located in Frankfurt, Germany as part of the group exhibition The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Hell and Purgatory Revisited by contemporary African artists. His work has also been shown at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. His work forms part of several public collections such as the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain; the Institut du Monde Arabe; La Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, France; the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York, U.S.A.; the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, Germany; the Sindika Dokolo Collection in Luanda, Angola and the Tunisian Ministry of Culture in Tunis.

HORTUS

JELLEL GASTELI SOLO EXHIBITION

12 December 2025 - 20 January 2026

Opening 12.12.25 at 5PM EN '1983, I step into the Henson garden through the prickly pear hedge that protected the property. Shielded by the density of the vegetation, only the...