Notes

Born in Tunisia, Meriem Bouderbala was trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Aix-en-Provence and at the Chelsea Art School in London. She currently lives and works between Tunis and Paris. “It is in this double origin and double culture – French and Tunisian – that she draws her creative inspiration. Her sensitivity is marked by this weaving of cultural and affective links with the Mediterranean. She chose to work in- between and to set a lucid and critical look on these two shores that history has, in turn, brought closer and kept apart.”¹

Describing this in-between space that her work conjures, Bouderbala states; “I come from paths that have crossed in other territories, none of them belong to me, none of them are waiting for me. We are nomads under house arrest by history. The borders that some men have set will be defeated by others, wiser, more distant, quieter. They are just a hastily placed ribbon, the crime has occurred, the scene is traced. The crime will be repeated, the ribbons are ready, the victims and the perpetrators ignore it. Everything’s going to be fine, play, in the name of the star, in the name of the crescent, in the name of the cross, in the name of what does not bear it not, in the name of the sun, in the name of death.”²

1. https://agorgi.com/meriem-bouderbala/

2. Meriem Bouderbala (translated) cited in Pollen; Exposition D’Art Viseul et Litteraire Dans les Jardiens de la Residence de France, Dar-El Kamila La Marsa, Tunis, 4 to 12 June 2016. Page 5.