Maison Fumetti, Nantes X Central Tunis, Tunis
« Street food Tunis VS street food Nantes”
Media : Drawing , Field Investigation
Themes : Food , Transmission & Heritage
How could drawing emancipate itself within a fledgling democracy? What place and role could artists occupy within it?
In an attempt to map the contours of an emerging scene, Maison Fumetti organised a programme in spring 2022 bringing together a collective residency, a series of correspondences, a journal, and an exhibition dedicated to Tunisian illustration and comics.
The project began with a “double” collective residency bringing together around ten artists from Tunisia and France. One of the main outcomes of the residency was the creation of the Kif Kif Journal, distributed free of charge in Tunis and Nantes.
The project culminated in an exhibition at Maison Fumetti, at the former Manufacture des Tabacs in Nantes, in June 2022, as part of the association’s annual festival. The exhibition had a dual ambition: to offer an overview of contemporary Tunisian comics and illustration, and to document the collective residencies that brought the artists together.
A team of nine artists was formed, five from Tunis and four from Nantes: Salim Zerrouki, Pauline Ferrand, Zeineb Ben Haouala, Guillaume Carreau, Timothée Moreau, Aroussi Tabbena, Othman Selmi, and myself.
The residency unfolded in two stages, first in Tunis and then in Nantes. It was primarily dedicated to artistic production, with the aim of creating content for both the publication and the exhibition.
The correspondences were written by pairs of French writers and Tunisian artists, working from their respective countries. They were regularly published on Maison Fumetti’s social media platforms and later incorporated into the publication.
The publication emerged from the encounters between the artists during the residencies, as well as from these exchanges of correspondence. Entitled Kif Kif, like the programme as a whole, it took the form of an illustrated newspaper distributed in both Nantes and Tunis.
The exhibition Maison Fumetti dedicated to Tunisian illustration and comics pursued a dual objective: to present an overview of the production of the time through a selection of artists and collectives, and to contextualise this work by introducing the Tunisian comics scene and documenting the residency process.
Programme
- 9 May – 10 June 2022: Correspondences
- 10 – 24 May 2022: Residency in Tunis
- 12 May 2022: Portraitum public drawing event, Place de la Victoire, Tunis
- 17 May 2022: Manu Manu professional gathering, simultaneously at Liber’thé in Tunis and Les Personnes in Nantes
- 31 May – 14 June 2022: Residency in Nantes
- 2 June 2022: Public meeting at Le Lieu Unique, Nantes
- 4 June 2022: Portraitum public drawing event, Marché de la Petite Hollande, Nantes
- 10 June – 23 July 2022: Exhibition at Maison Fumetti, Nantes
Medium / Date
Drawing — May–July 2022.
→ See also : El Khadhra Projet - Crossing