Residency

Shrouds (2025)

In this new series Shrouds, Tunisian artist Myriam Dachraoui—originally trained as an
architect—continues her exploration of space as a vestibule for memory. Growing up in a society where privacy was subject to constant scrutiny, the body, including her own, was both sheltered as much as it was confined by the domestic sphere. These contradictions dictated roles and imposed boundaries. “My body, my voice, and my gestures were shaped by a tacit surveillance by male family members, where intrusion and repression blurred under the guise of protection”, Dachraoui reflects.

In her paintings, this surveillance is revealed, subverted, and upended through an explorationof the relationship between intimacy, power, and self-staging. Architecture becomes her lens, a tool to probe the tension between visibility and intrusion. These restaged scenes confront the viewer with deliberately vulnerable scenes. On her canvases, perspective and scale shift unexpectedly; they are playfully yet deliberately altered, inviting the audience to look where they’re not supposed to—transforming them into voyeurs. The works coax the viewer into interrogating a narrative that exposes the tensions of the gaze upon female bodies, the injunction and demand for modesty, and the ways in which private space is often traversed, controlled, or even confiscated by society—especially within a North African context, where cultural conflicts surrounding the exposure of the body and intimacy continue to unfold.