Nestled away behind a corner of broken and worn stone, hidden within the Medina of Tunis, a solitary figure stands. Emblazoned on a wall, the etched caricature of Mohamed Hanchi stands alone, the black and blue ink complemented by only the clear sky above and the rose red anger – or was it blood? – on his cheeks, a tribute to the nineteen year old killed earlier this year when the people rose up against the government of Ben Ali. One martyr out of dozens, hidden away in this city on another wall, another street, another square, standing silent until rain will eventually wash them away. Less than a block away, stretching up the side of a two story house, another image sits, under a flowering branch of a tree and partially obscured by a parked three wheeled cargo truck. Upon it, stylized figures climb on each others’ backs, forming an improbable ladder with the Tunisian flag on top, the figure on the bottom hop scotching along a numbered pathway spiraling to la fin, ‘democratie’.

Documentary Graffiti

During and since the Tunisian revolution a tremendous transformation has taken place. An explosion of campaigning, newspapers, poetry, and public art has swept through a country where political and religious expression was brutally repressed. These mechanisms for control rested not only on political and economic means, but on a complex framework that dominated an individual’s interaction with the social and public sphere, and in a larger sense, their everyday interaction with society as a whole. Much of the public art that has emerged within Tunisia has sought to counter these mechanisms, and redefine space previously dominated by the government. As campaigns of civil resistance spread across Tunisia in late December and January, toppling Ben Ali, streets and squares were filled, occupied, renamed and covered in artwork that targeted not only the political system of the country, but sought to reclaim the public and social sphere, and fundamentally change individual interactions within them.

The street art in the Medina, of the boy killed during the revolution, and of the people hopscotching towards Democracy was part of this movement. It was created during February and March, as protests against the government continued, by the Zoo Project, a French Algerian graffiti artist based in Paris, to celebrate achievements of the revolution and to highlight the 236 ordinary citizens who lost their lives during the uprising. Mohammed Hanchi was killed on February 25th during clashes between police and demonstrators that led to the resignation of prime minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, a former finance minister under Ben Ali, two days later.

The title of this project was “Martyr” and as part of it, the artist placed more than 40 life size figures around the city, in the Medina, along the contentious Habib Bourgiba where the largest protests took place, in ordinary neighborhoods, and in key spots of confrontation between protesters and police. This style of ‘documentary graffiti‘ is “a gritty, truthful, considerate and refreshingly public way to illustrate what happened in Tunisia, and the questions that remain…a terrific, socially highly charged gallery of street art.” The fact that it still remains 5 months later gives testimony to the role that art plays in critically engaging passive observers and transforming space into an interactive dialogue.

During the same time period, a coalition of Tunisian artists including Slim Zeghal and Marco Berrebi, working with photographers Sophia Baraket, Rania Dourai, Wissal Dargueche, Aziz Tnani, Hichem Driss and Héla Ammar started a separate project that they labelled “Inside Out: Artocracy in Tunisia”. Working with an internationally acclaimed team of artists including Parisian born JR, who funded the project through a recently won ‘Ted Prize‘, they took more than 100 portraits of unknown Tunisians, representing the nation’s “incredible diversity of men and women of every age, profession, cultural background, and geographic location” and turned them into massive black and white posters, that were placed in spots and on monuments symbolically important to the recent revolution. For the artists behind one of the most ambitious contemporary street art projects in the Arab world, the project is about “replacing the once all-pervasive presidential photography with mosaics of ordinary, anonymous Tunisians who rose up against their government“. Over several weeks, they traveled from Sidi Bouzid, the sparking point for the Arab spring, to Sfax, Le Kram and Tunis, where they met with people from the neighborhoods to discuss the InsideOut project, share ideas, and eventually paste the posters.

Throughout Tunisia, giant murals of ordinary people replaced large portraits of Ben Ali. in the gutted ruins of government buildings, the burned husks of presidential palaces, and other locations like billboards, walls, along streets and the Port de France in Tunis They aimed to provoke discussion ‘in a world turned upside down or inside out’, transforming the streets and areas of social conflict into new arenas for discourse and dialogue. For the first few days, the project faltered, as the artists failed to engage with communities. Despite government authorization, their first attempt to place art on a fortress in the wealthy suburb of La Goulette was halted due to an angry crowd, and the posters they put up around the Porte de France, the gateway to the ancient Medina in the capital in central Tunis were torn down before they returned at 7am.

This resistance forced the team of artists to rethink their approach, and incorporate a more collaborative strategy in Sfax, Sidi Bouzid and Le Kram. There, they spent time to realize issues important to each region, explain the project and work with local people in open discussions and debate to make sure they created something meaningful, that would inspire the questions and conversations they wanted to raise. While surprise might play a key role in artwork elsewhere, the team realized the importance of dialogue during such a sensitive time in Tunisia. Photographer Aziz Tnani highlighted this shift: “We didn’t involve people. They woke up and just found the pictures… Some people told us ‘we saw so many pictures for so many years, we don’t want anyone to impose their pictures anymore,” he said.

Instead, artists began outreaching with local community and art groups, collaborating on these large scale projects with local community members interested in the idea. The purpose of the project, according to Tunisian photographer Marco Berrebi, was to “give people the freedom to debate the photographs and come to their own conclusions… After 50 years of silence, people are willing to discuss, to talk, to challenge your ideas,” says Berrebi, “If people want to tear them down, or write something on them, that’s part of the project, that’s okay.”

This was not meant to be only documentary street art but to challenge and transform iconic spaces that symbolized the domination of the previous ruling elite into one of discourse and dialogue. One of the photographers working on the project, Wissal Darguiche, when asked why photographs of those killed during the revolution were not put up explained that she wanted to “show the future, not the past”. Parisian artist JR continued these sentiments. Asked about the meaning of his art, he talked about a previous experience, in which he overheard a conversation from a man trying to figure out the meaning of the nameless faces, to which a woman replied “You know, you’ve been here for a few hours trying to understand, discussing with your fellows. During that time, you haven’t thought about what you are going to eat tomorrow. This is art”. He continued: “There is nothing better to understand the weight of traditions and the willingness to change than to post big portraits in the symbolic places of the popular districts and try to explain the concept to people nearby…” and afterwards, to listen to people “ask questions, challenge the project… and explain the project to their neighbors.”

For a slideshow of Artocracy in Tunisia: Ordinary Tunisians in Portrait, click below:

http://www.vuvox.com/collage_express/collage.swf?collageID=03b38b15c0

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