Catalogue > At random

In the mining town of Redeyef (Tunisia), a disused site still full of affect: the staff co-op. Established and managed by the phosphate company of Gafsa during colonial times, this empty site still retains within its walls the stratum of the ambivalence of a history where the sparkling surface relates the arrival, where there is nothing, of a haven of comfort for a society burdened by work in the mine. But beyond the initial impression, it's a darker reality that the staff co-op induces: that of a commercial extension of a mine exploiting the earth as much as its people. A vestige site, the staff co-op is a place of abandoned memory that a videographic and poetic eye penetrates, bringing to light, by the chiaroscuro of the time that goes by, through the voice of a child still living in the memories of a mine worker, the spaces, surfaces and historic depth of a site is portrayed.

Born in 1982 in Tunis, Ali Tnani is a Tunisian contemporary artist based in Tunis and Paris. He received his Masters in 2007 from the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-arts of Tunis and has since exhibited widely and participated in international residency programs. Tnani recently completed a two-year residency at the prestigious Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. A leading practitioner in the field of conceptual art, Tnani is known for his multimedia installation work examining social issues in post-revolutionary Tunisia. With a practice that draws on installation, drawing, and photography, he explores the question of erasure and the negative in narratives of traces, memory and history in an era of hyper-connectivity. He has participated in various solo and group exhibitions internationally, including the 13th Biennial of Dakar, the Musée du Bardo in Tunis, PA the Plateforme de création contemporaine and Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, La Terrasse Nanterre Art Space and le Château d'Oiron (France), the 5th Marrakech Biennial, the Musée de Carthage in Tunis, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mons (Belgium) and the Biennial of young artists from Europe and the Mediterranean in Skopje, Macedonia.