In the heart of Sammichele di Bari, Aymen Mbarki intertwines his artistic research with the town's layered history, rich in migrations, hospitality, and transformations. Founded in 1608 by the Jewish-Portuguese merchant Michele Vaaz and populated by Slavic refugees fleeing Ottoman invasions, this Apulian village holds a plural memory that deeply resonates in the artist’s work.

Inspired by the numerous walled-up doors scattered throughout the historic center—silent traces of promised or denied accesses, forgotten or unrealized—Mbarki creates a portal that serves as a metaphor for both inner and collective thresholds. As Octavio Paz wrote, “Everything is a door. All one needs is the light push of a thought”, accordingly the Tunisian artist invites passersby to transcend the barriers of the everyday, opening a passage to contemplation, reflection, and imagination.

The work consists of a laser-engraved plexiglass sheet featuring faintly perceptible symbols, signs, and writings with an iron frame with Arabesque lines typical of North African medinas. Rooted in Mediterranean histories and mythologies, these white-etched symbols evoke epiphanies, collective memories, and poetic suggestions. The semi-transparent plexiglass surface mirrors that of the (Mediterranean) sea: an immense gateway, a fluid and mutable threshold, both welcoming and perilous. Thus, the work becomes not only a visual and symbolic passage but also a space for political reflection on urgent contemporary issues.

The title, The Verse of the Sea (Hizb al-Bahr), draws inspiration from the verses of the mystic Abu Al Hassan Al Chaduli, who invoked the sea as a space of protection, meditation, and revelation. Like the marabouts—spiritual and hospitable sentinels who watched over the North African coasts with vigilant eyes and open arms—Mbarki invites us to rethink the Mediterranean, not as a line of fracture, but as a shared horizon: a common space of memory, encounter, and hope, a threshold to cross with the gentle push of a thought.