The beauty of our surroundings is often heightened in the mind’s eye, becoming a vision that could only be faithfully reproduced by an expressive art form like painting. This is exemplified beautifully by the vibrant landscapes of Fares Thabet, in which sandy beaches blush pink, seas fade into turquoise green, and skies turn tangerine orange at dusk. These havens of tranquillity exist only in the imagination, yet they bear traces of human habitation in the vaguely eerie manner of Giorgio de Chirico. Sometimes we spot a lone figure or a boat drifting in the distance, as is the case with Départ (2024) and L’Escargot rentre dans son palais 13 (2024). At other times, we spy entire abandoned cities that have become at one with their environment, as in Houses (2021) and Le soleil défonce les songes et les chimères (2024).
A large collection of new canvases was included in the exhibition Un bâteau, sans naufrage et sans étoile, which opened at Selma Feriani Gallery in Tunis over the summer. They had been inspired by a trip that Thabet took last winter to Algeria, the homeland of his mother, who was born in France during the Algerian War of Independence. “Our family relationship with the country has always been complicated, so I decided to take a solo trip to gain a more personal perspective on the country,” he says. “It was an intense journey that greatly influenced my imagination and allowed me to collect visual and literary material, which I used to develop my practice.”
The visit also offered a new vantage point on the same North African landscape that Thabet has returned to throughout his mature painting practice. “This time, I felt more at ease emphasising elements, exaggerating them, or giving them dreamlike qualities,” he explains. Even back home in his native Tunisia, Thabet’s everyday surroundings offer plenty of inspiration, with his studio located in the bay of Tunis, near the ancient ruins of Carthage.
