In his latest exhibition in Tunis, the Moroccan artist turns his attention to the migration of plants, drawing a subtle parallel with the historical displacement of Black populations. His minimalist aesthetic becomes a finely tuned instrument for revealing the complexity of lived experience.
Other histories are still possible. It is with this conviction that M’barek Bouhchichi, working with curators Beya Othmani and Omar Berrada, presents Les Graines Noires (Black Seeds) at Selma Feriani Gallery in Tunis. At the entrance, two enigmatic, pared-down sculptures, one in white Carrara marble and the other in Tunisia’s black Aziza marble, seem to reach across centuries to address the viewer. Both pieces reproduce a Neolithic figure from the fifth century BCE, unearthed in Sudan in the 1980s. Their stark chromatic contrast quietly echoes the thinking of Frantz Fanon while elevating the legendary figure of Saadia, whose name the works bear, to the realm of representation.
