Art and Transcultural Resistance

Abstract

In a globalized culture dominated by ICT, video‐art, photomontage and mediatized installations and events, the question of authenticity – in the sense of being true to oneself – is posed in terms of artistic expression. How can one go about re‐creating oneself and the world through the subversive power of art, while retaining a degree of freedom? The same artistic criteria are imposed for forms of expression for the works of non‐European artists, and particularly artists from former colonies like the North African countries. Today, artists from these countries are quite at home with new techniques, but post‐colonial stereotypes (pictures of veiled women or oriental violence) continue to prefer artists who meet these expectations. So for these artists, creating means ‘resisting’, to quote Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. The new generation of Tunisian artists, which includes many women, seems to deliberately ignore the problem of identity, the better to appropriate the uniqueness of each artist. Their imagination is a driving force for moving borders and preventing people from clinging to ethnic identity.