Performance · VR · 104 Paris · Gabès Cinéma Fen · IFT Tunis
« The whole body draws »
Media : Video & VR , performance, Drawing
Themes : Living Matter , Body
Synopsis
A female character has developed what could be described as an extreme state of ecological anxiety. Every gesture of everyday life — the way she consumes, moves, and simply exists — has become a source of anguish. The only solution she can find to keep living is to transform herself into a tree.She goes into the forest, walks for a long time, then lies down. She has no idea how the transformation is supposed to work. She closes her eyes and begins to breathe, listen, and feel from within as the transformation takes place inside her.
Still Life explores this transformation — adaptation as the only means of survival.
Inside lies a biosphere: several overlapping ecosystems populated by characters, figures, animals, and hybrid beings of all sizes. A dense network of dependencies unfolds — some beings intertwine like a host sheltering a parasite, a necessary partner in its life cycle.
Here, shamanic rituals coexist with a lunch between Manet and Lars von Trier, and a blood transfusion takes place between a deer and a flower. I find myself listening to thoughts that seem foreign to me, and feeling empathy for an ant trapped beneath a rock at the other end of the forest.
The journey moves through several levels, eventually leading to a zaouïa — a Sufi retreat space — where the ceremony of transformation takes place.
Still Life changed my relationship with drawing. After 2020, I could no longer draw in 2D — I began to see things in 3D, as if I were inside the headset. Throughout the creative process, I constantly moved back and forth between the real and the virtual: drawings I made in the physical world were brought into the virtual one, and vice versa.
The first version was highly intuitive. During lockdown, I began trying to understand what I had drawn and why. I researched tree communication, ants, the cosmos, quantum physics — the infinitely small and its direct connection to the infinitely large. This question of scale runs throughout Still Life.
From this process, the projects that followed, one by one, were born: Quand les arbres murmurent (2020) — plexiglass boxes recreating, in cut paper, what had originally been drawn in space. Cahier d’automne ou lettre d’amour à un arbre (2021) — overlapping sheets assembled in three to six layers to suggest slow movement and the passage of time. Color Wheel (2021) — seven watercolours, one for each chakra. Dans ma tête pousse une forêt (2023). And Les Jardins de mon père (2025) — where I found Still Life already planted.
The universe is still expanding. Still Life remains an open-ended project. An application is currently in development.
"Still Life invites you to immerse yourself in an imagined world and build empathy. You truly get to look at this beautifully curated world from all angles and take on new perspectives." — Louisa Mammeri, Network Organizer for North Africa and West Asia
Médium / Date : Live VR drawing performance with an audience — approximately 20 minutes, accompanied by a sound composition. 360° views available for viewing through a VR headset. Videos designed for projection mapping. Watercolours and paper models.
2020–2025.
Performances presented at
104 Paris — Gabès Cinéma Fen — Institut Français de Tunisie, Tunis.
2020–2022.
Production: Intage Production.
→ See also : When the Trees Whisper - My Father’s Garden - A Forest Grows in My Head