Surrealism and Power in Contemporary Tunisian Art: Sculpture by AÏcha Filali and Houda Ghorbel

Abstract

Surrealism and Power in Contemporary Tunisian Art:Sculpture by AÏcha Filali and Houda Ghorbel Anne Marie E. Butler (bio) INTRODUCTION Contemporary Tunisian surrealist artworks expose and subvert the interplay of productive and suppressive strategies of Tunisian political regimes that originated under the first president of the republic, HABIB BOURGUIBA (1956–1987), solidified under ZINE EL-ABIDINE BEN ALI (1987–2011), and which continue to permeate the post-2011 era.1 While these three larger eras of the modern Tunisian state are distinct, the state's multiple, interwoven parts constitute a deep entrenchment of authority that suffuses each. Aïcha Filali's Hierarchy (2000) (see fig. 1) and Houda Ghorbel's Pensées Canalisées (Channeled Thoughts, 2016) (see fig. 2) each critique state power by pointing out the realities of the Tunisian state's operations. In Hierarchy, three ceramic heads, one mounted above the next, indicate how individual bodies set in power [End Page 499] relationships remain beholden to the state apparatus. Meanwhile, Ghorbel juxtaposes ceramic heads with PVC bodies in parallel to the opposing demands of the Tunisian state and Tunisian social norms on citizens. She indicates that even post-uprising, issues of state authoritarianism still affect Tunisians' autonomy. Her assessment corresponds with a body of scholarship on political repression and dissidence in modern Tunisia, including texts by Mohamed Chamekh, Laryssa Chomiak, Abir Kréfa, and Mohamed-Salah Omri.2 Filali evaluates the Ben Ali era and Ghorbel the post-uprising moment, indicating that state power cannot be addressed merely through shifts in political power. These Tunisian artists use surrealism through the deployment of the uncanny, illogical bodily configurations, and biomorphic shapes. Such iterations disrupt the boundaries between reality and dream, conscious and subconscious. Yet, it would be a mistake to think of surrealism as wholly concerned with fantasy. Although it often suggests the merger of fantasy and reality, surrealism in fact challenges established reality. Some questioning along this line is found in Tunisian art pioneer Hatim El Mekki's approach to artmaking, which Jean Goujon describes as ceaselessly questioning the world through images.3 Tunisia can be seen as one such exploitative society where surrealism can help to expose the "pseudo-real" of the state. With its origins typically ascribed to twentieth-century Europe, surrealism may seem an incongruous choice for artists working in contemporary Tunisia. Surrealism, however, was a global ideological movement that equally prized poetry, literature, and visual culture. The Egyptian surrealist group Art and Liberty (1938 to the late 1940s), the Paris-based Arab Surrealist Movement in Exile (founded in the 1970s), and the Chicago Surrealist Group (founded in 1966) are examples of the movement's global scale. In 1939, Kamel Telmisany, a member of Art and Liberty, expressed: "[surrealism] is a movement whose most distinctive feature is the internationalism of its thought and means. Its character is not local or nationalist in any way."4 Women North African surrealist artists such as Egyptian Inji Efflatoun, another member of the Art and Liberty group, and Algerian Baya Mahieddine also provide a backdrop for the surrealist aspects of [End Page 500] Filali's and Ghorbel's works.5 Contemporary artists who subscribe to surrealism's tenets continue to transgress geographies and eras, including through a new surrealist magazine, The Room (Al Ghurfa), which features contemporary surrealist art and poetry from the Arab world and Mediterranean.6 Tunisian artists working in surrealism are not part of a contemporary or sustained surrealist movement, yet a history of surrealism exists in Tunisia. The movement is discussed in the Tunisian context in poetry and literature, for example.7 In visual art, El Mekki, Abdelaziz Gorgi, and Jellal Ben Abdallah, members of the École de Tunis (1936–1956) under the French protectorate, each exhibit surrealist styles in their painting.8 French surrealism touched Tunisia directly through French surrealist poet and (later exiled) member of André Breton's group Philippe Soupault, who directed Radio Tunis from 1937 to 1940. Importantly, a group of intellectuals operating in Tunis during the interwar period, Taht Essour (Under the Ramparts), comprised what may have been the only organized group to align itself with surrealist ideals. At its core, surrealism as an ideology and an ontology...