Nidhal Chamekh. Portfolio www.nidhal-chamekh.com

Le battement des ailes. 2016 Mémé exhibition. Selma Feriani gallery. Tunis.

Le battement des ailes series. 2016 > 2018 Drawings. Ink, graphite and transfer on paper.

Le battement des ailes are an « assemblage » of heterogenous elements separated from their respective context: memories lived, ancient engravings, anatomical drawings, poem extracts. The drawings are gatherings of specters in the sense of family gathering: feeling at ease while on the edge of explosion. Between the historical study of colonization, the migratory movements and the contemporary geopolitical conflicts; the drawings are like riddle where the visual unconscious of history and news unfold, it’s dreamed revolution, it’s repressed revenants. If there is representation, it’s in a theatrical sense that it should be understood. The drawn page is like a theatre without décor in which unfolds a dream like scene. A theatre of the collective unconscious in which we see that we are seen: eyes are staring, a kind of gaze-camera on paper.

Le battement des ailes B. 2017 Graphite powder on cotton paper. 100 x 140 cm.

Le battement des ailes B. 2017 Graphite, ink and transfer on cotton paper. 100 x 140 cm.

Untitled - Vexil. 2017 Flag: Tarpaulin and blackened steel. 250 x 250 cm.

The tarpaulin, and especially its turquoise blue version has become a social marker. Blankets for the homeless, shelters for refugees and marginalized, roofs during natural disasters, tarpaulin with royal color (according to technical jargon) is synonymous with precariousness. The tarpaulin is more than ever synonymous with abandonment. The blue flag coincides with the royalist standard (hence the royal blue), still widely claimed by European nationalism and that of the blue tarp that also serves as protection for thousands of homeless. This flag is a kind of tribute to refugees, exiles and migrants who roam Europe.

Never give up. 2017 Single channel, HD, color video, sound.

Forced to abandon what they constructed and invented together for month, many migrants set on fire, less humiliating, their houses before the heavy machinery could get to them. As one of the makeshift dwelling is consumed by the fire and it’s wall start falling down, one phrase appears: Never give up. a video featuring a long-fixed shot of the dwelling vanishing down the flames (Never give up). Proceeding the camp’s dismantling ordered by the Pas-de-Calais prefecture (Police services) in March 2016, several refugees, forced to abandon the community they built and invented together, set fire to their makeshift dwellings.

Documentation photos in Calais. 50 photos. Color. 2015 / 2016

Documentation photos in Calais. 50 photos. Color. 2015 / 2016

Documentation photos in Calais. 50 photos. Color. 2015 / 2016

Calais, études et fragments de mémoires. Installation. 2017 Drawing, archive documents, stuffed seagulls and barrel. La Biennale d'Architecture d'Orléans © Frac Centre-Val de Loire Photographie : Blaise Adilon

In March 2016, the French authorities of Pas de Calais decided to tear down the southern part of a migrant camp before completely destroying it in October of the same year. Today this place is closed to public access in the name of “landscape re-conquest”, the places of gathering were the first to be dismantled; the makeshift dwellings and other shelters were destroyed by bulldozers or burned by the fire. An arsenal of technology and security mechanism have been mobilized to erase the trace of thousands of woman and men who lived in this place for two years. If we overlook humanitarian and political questions that this event has raised, the massive destruction of “the jungle” primarily aims to stop an unprecedented experience, the building of a common city. The elements collected, observed and photographed in the Calais jungle are crafted to question what was implemented with this experience. This ensemble is confronted to historical and archive materials to create link between heterogenous time and spaces inviting a non-synthetic reading. The gaps as well as the imaginary injected in each proposition questions each time what lies at the heart of our rapport with the world; that is inhabiting.

Studying Circles. 2015. Graphite on wood-free paper. 240 x 300 cm.

Studying Circles* is a synthesis of former works such as Excursus and Study 8 from De Quoi Rêvent les Martyrs series. It is so far the largest drawing. The staging bears to the cinematic, in the way painting draws on history. But instead of a still image as in so many previous drawings, it is a halted action, as if the actors’ performance is suddenly frozen in the presence of beholders. Action is interrupted by the presence of an outsider, or the beholder is partaking in the staged action, or a reversal even as to "what we see and who looks at us", the beholder is then the only actor, the "culprit", while the drawn group bears witness to the act. While the figures surrounding the burned and charred young man seem to be caught in their own chores, the gaze directed at us and equally amputated from the scene drowns the drawing in the strident silence. The image is the sole and unique reality, as interpellated by the group of actors, as drawn, but especially as "performed" by the beholder. *Studying Circles is based on a newspaper photograph documenting a real incident that took place on the main street in Downtown Tunis. On 12 March 2013, a twenty-seven-year-old cigarette vendor set himself on fire down the steps of Municipal Theatre on Habib Bourguiba Avenue, bringing back memories of similar incidents that swept the country in the wake of Mohammed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in 2010 - an act that sparked the Tunisian revolution and the wider Arab Spring.

Transmigration. 2016. Graphite Powder on canvas. 180 x 250 cm.

The Transmigration reproduces the customs passport control space. The drawing excludes minor details and keeps only the essentials: A confined space, two control offices, two rating plates (EU citizens and All Nationalities), two waiting queues and a neon lighting system. In its discretion and its apparent artificiality, customs control reveals its sheer violence and the trauma of such a spatial “administrative” experience. the water that stagnates in place and the absence of people evokes a kind of disaster that had just fallen and destroy the space and its operation. The transmigration reminded the Last Judgment imagery in art history. Transmigration, title of this work, refers to the transnational migration certainly, but also to the monotheistic notion of the judgement day.

Excursus. 2014. Graphite on paper. 100 x 150 cm.

Excursus, mark to classical painting, its harmony codes to overthrow the purpose, makes lines of tension. The subject of the work is itself full of tensions. Taken from a scene of expulsion of a North African migrant, on the eve of the Arab uprising, the image takes us back to the events that have shaken the Mediterranean and to the waves of illegal migration from the countries during the "democratic transition." The migrant is tied up and pulled violently to the aircraft. The movement of the body is reminiscent of the biblical scenes of bondage and crucifixion of Christ. The construction lines in the drawing and the cross spectrum placed at the entrance of the plane enhance this kind of allegorical effect. The Mobile Gateway cuts its space into 2 halves, making hence the inside and the outside confusing, in and out as well. An eastern desert crosses the horizon as far as the eye can see. Actually, everything takes a strange turn; the exotism of the "legal" travel is associated with illegal adventure, postcolonial heritage and to tourism advertising images.

حالي ّشومتي فرنسا . (France, you bullied me). 2016 Neon.

Burn. 2016. Installation books, photographic archives, technical papers.

Trois Poses de Fadhel Sessi. 2016 Burned bread and charcoal on canvas. 210h x 750 cm.

Trois poses de Fadhel Sassi. 2016. Serigraph prints. Burned bread. Edition of 3.

The Hannibal Smiling. 2016. Resin and marble powder. 73 x 52 x 28 cm.

Untitled (burn). 2016 Neon, fishes and aquarium.

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that

"State of emergency" in which we live is the rule. Walter Benjamin, on the concept of history.

In the aftermath of the 14th of January 2011, the security measures in the city of Tunis were

reinforced, particularly the urban enclosures of barbed wire. That which was previously

considered « exceptional measures » has now become the norm. The barbed wire and other

barriers are now part of the urban landscape. Barbed Gate is an artistic creation consisting of

a dressing of the Porte de France – also known locally as Bab El Bhar – in barbed wire, thus

confusing the controlled element and the instrument of control.

With Barbed Gate, the imposing and emblematic structure retreats in order to give place to a

ghostly silhouette, going back in history, on the Door overlooking the sea, renamed Porte de

France by the colonial authorities, and aligning itself today on the linear axe that is Habib

Bourguiba avenue with its three monuments, the statues of Ibn Khaldoun and Bourguiba as

well as the Obelisk. By intervening on Bab El Bhar, Barbed Gate looks back on the symbolism

that this Door may have captured and the historical events that shaped it into a frontier-

monument. By investing the town, Barbed Gate also mobilizes the inhabitants and commuters

of Tunis with the construction of a common art piece: a curiosity study at the Foundouk des

Français, not far from the Porte de France, will welcome the collective imaginary around the

notion of « borders ».

The Anti-Clock Project. 2015. 3D print and & 11 drawings. Courtesy Venice Biennale & Barjeel Foundation © Photo Alessandra Chamollo

The Anti-Clock Project is a utopian urban project aiming to destroy a Tunisian monument, the 7th of November Watch Clock, through another one, the Tour of Culture, whose construction has been delayed almost four years. The installation is composed of a central element –an architectural model. The architectural model gathers both the architectural as well as the urbanistic aspect of the Anti-Clock Project. It shows the downtown where the intervention was meant to take place as well as the construction of a suspended path. The suspended path resembles a rollercoaster conveying the Tour of Culture’s as a spherical element being thrown onto the face of the Clock. The clock destruction project focuses indeed on a double discourse: one utopian –the impossibility of its realization and the importance of the artistic gesture- and finally, another functional –employing a useless monument to abolish an absolute one-.

Le Pays-Visage. 2014. Graphite on paper. 105 x 114 cm.

The design feature is made by mounting the ghostly image of a homeland and paves the way to see this unfinished look. In fact, it is the impossible appropriation of the image viewed and experience lived. The fact to return to oneself, by identifying what traces its limits and boundaries, becomes obsolete. No one can deny that the memory does return, but it does also escape us while doing so. It makes us ‘possible’ open subjects, without borders, unidentified and projected beyond our presence, towards a continuous transformation.

البهائم و بيدبا - Beydaba and the beasts. 2014. Graphite on paper. 120x105 cm.

Série De quoi rêvent les martyrs 2. 2012 - 2013 Inks, graphite and transfer on ivory paper. 42 x 60 cm.

Drawing is the basis of art. It forms a discreet layer, which hides itself behind a painting without ever completely disappearing, or behind a sculpture, a video, an installation without ever falling into oblivion. There is always a preliminary drawing before a work of art. Therefore we can say that a drawing is a beginning without ever being an end. To the beginning of things that’s exactly where Nidhal Chamekh wants to go with his drawings. What happens in someone’s mind to venture in this way in the vicinity of death, can it be a desired destiny? Like a journey with an imaginary arrival. ‘We are beings with an end’ (Martin Heidegger) forsaken at death. However, one’s life and destiny can be summarised as an attempt to forget this appointment with death. Against all reason, the martyr depicted in Nidhal’s drawings plans this encounter, he provokes it. His drawings return to the beginning of things, a dream about life becomes a dream about death, they dissect and describe it without ever understanding it and never try to justify anything.

Abdelkader Damani