In Jumièges, a Tunisian breath on the ruins of historical past | EUROtoday

On Jun 12, 2025

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Lhe partitions steeped in historical past of the Abbey of Jumièges, described as “the most beautiful ruin in France” by Victor Hugo, give a singular resonance to a different story, that of Tunisia, seen by way of the gaze of 11 modern artists. The exhibition “Time digs even marble” thus evokes the passing time and its imprint.

“This Tunisian saying, whose French equivalent would be:” drop after drop, the water finally ends up digging the stone “, seemed perfectly to resonate compared to the site of the Abbey of Jumieges, very mineral. To the materiality of the works are added the collective aspect and the idea of the addition of small actions which produce, in the long term, significant changes. It is also the idea that nothing is frozen, engraved in marble, ”explains Victoria Jonathan, exhibition commissioner.

History to Contrechamp

Through photographs, videos, collages or installations, guest artists explore history and memory, question or invent the archives, whether national or family. Héla Ammar, Ismaïl Bahri, Asma Ben Aïssa, Younès Ben Slimane, Meriem Bouderbala, Rafrim Chaddad, Chiraz Chouchane, Férielle Doulain-Zouari, Farah Khelil, Amira Lamti and Fredj Moussa thus bring their sensitivity and engage a dialogue around these questions.

“All are committed to enlightening, under a new light, a past whether it is near or distant. The works gathered roaming places and eras, from Carthage to colonization, from the Revolution of the Arab Spring (2011) to contemporary migrations, ”continues Victoria Jonathan. Photography is hybridized with embroidery, glass painting, drawing or mosaic, blurring the boundaries between contemporary art and popular traditions. While appropriating varied techniques and supports from the history of photography, from cyanotype to glass plates to gelatino-bromide, from 16 mm film to digital image taken on the smartphone, artists engage in physical experiments, cut, stick, crumble, embroide, project …

In a video, Ismaïl Bahri thus explores the materiality of the printed image. By grazing the page of a magazine, repeatedly and almost infinite, the image gradually disappears, leaving the ink on the artist’s hands.

Héla Ammar also evokes erasure. She continues her exploration of memory, but this time, in a very personal way. “Through my grandfather, I combine household historical past with nationwide historical past, each that of Tunisia and that of France,” she says. Engaged in the struggle for independence, and already married to a Tunisian, he falls in love with a young Corsica and contracts a polygamous marriage. From this story, she invents correspondence, incorporates photographs and family documents in layer envelopes, playing transparency and superposition, thus evoking the erasure of memories.

RAFRM CHADDAD also draws on the intimacy of the family to find the traces of the Jewish community in Tunisia, with the portrait of its grandparents made in mosaic, traditional art emblematic of Tunisia. Still in mosaic, he produced the portrait of Halima, the mother of the Tunisian black photographer and militant Lotfi Ghariani. Its objective: to make visible marginalized people in an increasingly tense political context.

These are the photographic funds that question Meriem Bouderbala. She was inspired by the photos of Studio Lehnert & Landrock, installed in Tunisia at the start of the XX^e century. Very emblematic photos of this period reflecting an Orient idealized by the colonists. She plays with this scenography, staging herself in shots which she reworks endlessly. The almost unrecognizable body disappears in a kaleidoscopic image. She also looked at another photographic corpus of the same era, but more unexpected. That of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, psychiatrist and photographer, of the deposit in Paris. A place where small offenders landed and people considered as potential mental ills. During this period, a very particular phenomenon rages in the Paris of department stores: “fans of materials” stole silk coupons, with a kind of sexual fetishism. The psychiatrist takes a passion for the drape and produced a series of more than 5,000 photos, especially in Morocco. It appears in large white drapes that veil it, reveal it. This large piece of rectangular fabric is a traditional garment in northern Tunisia (Mélia). She plays with this iconography, referring as much to the images of the Pietà, of the Turin shroud, as to the Islamic sail.

Prevented transmission, recreated memory

The textile remains the predilection material of Asma Ben Aïssa. “I went across the north of Tunisia in search of embroidery ladies with a purpose to ask them concerning the transmission between moms and ladies,” she says. Each region has a very specific embroidery. Through the photo, video and recording, she documents know-how that cannot be transmitted to her. Photographs, conversations, bird song, Asma Ben Aïssa created an archive revealing the lives of these women in the shade of the patios. The photo becomes a support. She embroiders over it, trying to redo the same gestures that cannot be taught to her.

In the abbey home of jumièges, more than 80 contemporary works inspired by Tunisian territory thus dialogue in a surprising way with the statues and vestiges of the lapidary collection of the abbey.

Two recumbers evoking the legend of “upsets of Jumièges”, according to which, the two sons of King Clovis II, rebellious against their father, were punished and “aggravated” before being collected by the Abbey, dialogue with a work by Meriem Bouderbala. By their side, on a chair, a rolled blanket printed with a photograph revealing a female body gives the illusion of a woman wrapped in a carpet, echoing the stratagem of Cleopatra to meet Jules César, or in a more polar spirit, a corpse rolled in a carpet. In the room next door, a trinity of saints watches over the works of Amira Lamti which evokes the ritual of traditional Tunisian marriage. Young visual artist, Amira is girl and little girl of Machta, the one who accompanies the bride in the prenuptial ceremony.

“In this exhibition, intimate, typically household accounts, in addition to the mobilization of vernacular know-how, come to complexify, nuance historical past, that of heroic tales and nice historic occasions”, decrypts Victoria Jonathan.

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

The story can be that of the day by day drama that’s performed out on the shores of the Mediterranean. Night turned, We knew Beautiful they had been, these islands Follows a person digging graves. Younes Ben Slimane doesn’t present a our bodies. These are objects – comb, scandal, toy – stranded on the seashore, that are buried within the silence of the evening.

This exhibition, seen till September 21, is a selection defended by the division of Seine-Maritime, to mark ten years of decentralized cooperation with Tunisia.

“Time even digs marble”. Abbey of Jumièges (Seine-Maritime). Until September 21. Abbeydejumyges.fr

https://www.lepoint.fr/afrique/a-jumieges-un-souffle-tunisien-sur-les-ruines-de-l-histoire-12-06-2025-2591895_3826.php