فكروني: ASMA BEN AISSA SOLO EXHIBITION

Asma Ben Aissa’s journey unfolds upon itself in this exhibition—a strata of techniques and experimentations that inform one another and reunite. The derivations are fluid, each minutia proven in correlation, as she circles and dusts the shelves of her mind, from which she reaps their innumerable compatibilities. All the stories she has once collected are the seeds from which everything will soon bloom. All the elements Ben Aissa has accumulated throughout the years conjoin at the summit of this exhibition: her primordial subject, the landscape; her chosen method of execution, embroidery; and all that lies in between. 

Initially, Ben Aissa’s research sought to trace the history of transmission of this tradition within the community, precisely passed on from mother to daughter, only to discover the presence of a third—inevitably essential—figure: the Maalma. This profound know-how is transmitted through her, at the heart of a traditional home, a patio: a courtyard where women gather, not merely to acquire skills, but to absorb a way of being. Coincidently, the inwardness of a house has always held a quiet interest for Ben Aissa; a sanctuary, a place of protection. This is a space that opens onto the outside world, evolving into what she calls an intimate landscape. It is also closely connected to Ben Aissa’s installation at Hirafen, a starting point of this research, as well as other recent explorations. Her work bears reverence and humility toward the craft of embroiderers—their often-invisible heritage—and particularly toward the master craftswoman or guardian of this tradition, Maalma, with whom she collaborated, recording their gestures and collecting their oral testimonies. Their conversations were frequently interrupted by the voice of Umm Kalthoum drifting through the space. The exhibition takes its title from Fakarouni, the haunting and poignant ballad—or monologue—by Umm Kulthum, a national icon whose legacy reverberates across generations throughout the MENA region. During one such exchange, a woman began to sing Fakarouni as she recounted her memories: “This song by Umm Kulthum has accompanied me my entire life”, the woman told her. “I’ve been singing it since the late ‘70s, and it has become a part of me”. When questioned about the passing of this knowledge, their responses were invariably and deeply personal tales, tied to their calling and craft, to the means by which they sustain themselves. And for the first time, Ben Aissa engages with this reservoir of untold, individual and collective, lived experiences in a new light. 

Embroidery thus transforms into a method of emancipation for these women, who more often than ever have faced meagre financial opportunities. Beyond mere subsistence and construction, it takes on the form of an act of resistance and autonomy, no matter how discreet or clandestine the process. What is truly at stake is the continuation of this know-how; if no one dedicates themselves to preserving this heritage, if the ephemeral voice bearing witness fades into distance. Ben Aissa then assumes the role of a transmitter, storing this knowledge through her threads. As art historian Khadija Hamdi writes, “this loss of memory surrounding the history of these ornaments compels Asma to embark on a true textile archaeology, where each motif becomes a puzzle to solve, a forgotten story waiting to be rewritten”. Confronted with the fragility and imminent threat to this transmission, Ben Aissa takes embroidery as a language of choice—in the fullest sense of the word—and asks herself: how, through writing, can she speak embroidery in her own voice? How can she converse with it on her own terms? 

Through embroidered patterns, the thread breeds an illegible text or manuscript, translating an inner, fragmentary, and intimate memory. It is a second construction layered upon the first, built through folds, tonal shifts, contrasts, and colour. The infinite folding allows certain layers to be more porous than their superimposed counterparts: this technique or modulation allows colours to invariably unfurl and froth upon the surface, cascading and filtering through it. Just as the sun rubs on the fabric, light is absorbed, and a harmonious degradation is established, imbued within the final unfolding. The traces they bear and retain hover between appearance and disappearance, like the landscapes and stories that are doomed to vanish, and that Ben Aissa seeks to recover.  

Animating the fabric with dangling words or quasi-openings, like a bas-relief, Ben Aissa conjures a latent language—one that is unknown even to herself, yet one that she magically invented. This language is akin to boustrophedon, from the Greek boustros (ox) and strephein (to turn), a system of writing in which lines run alternately from right to left and left to right, mimicking the way oxen turn while plowing a field. Therefore, visually and cognitively, the undulating stitch traces a dual path—one that resists linear reading, capable of stalling, reversing, or dissolving depending on where the viewer’s gaze settles. But it is beyond a question of readability; it is surpassed by a deeper responsibility. Ben Aissa does not lend these intimate, dissipated stories lightly for inspection. The alphabetic unit is substituted, the syllables are in repose, and writing becomes a measure of space that is visualized. Their oral history becomes engulfed in the works themselves, its “intimate immensity” becoming tangibly preserved.  

In conversations about transmission, the dialogue invariably returns to a wardrobe, a box, a coffret—places in which these women safeguard their precious creations or treasured fabrics. This gesture, the image itself, and even the scent that rises when such containers are opened, is nearly ubiquitous: it calls to mind an elder beloved figure, the keeper of a familiar armoire or box, imprinted indelibly in our visual memory. Bachelard remarks on the unfathomable intimacy of wardrobes as the “veritable organs of the secret psychological life…Like us, through us and for us, they have a quality of intimacy”. He adds, “a wardrobe’s inner space is also intimate space, space that is not open to just anybody”, a statement that reflects these women’s cautiousness in sharing their craft beyond trusted circles.1 To miniaturize is to fold into intimate recesses, and in this exhibition, Ben Aissa does so deliberately, placing it under the magnifying glass of our gaze. This interplay of scale—the infinitesimal folds containing vast margins of primordial histories—bears intimacy and secrecy. A territory of protection, one where dreams are navigated by an effort to overcome one’s condition. At the sight of it, we sense its familiarity, and we gravitate from afar to “the mute tumult of memories”.2