TUNIS – It was the early spring in Tunisia and shockingly clear Bougainvillea exploded, the sky was a clear cerulean blue and the Mediterranean Sea a wingspan of endless turquoise. That riot of lively color outside was also inside, in the B7L9 art center, host of The birds chirping above the treeThe first solo exhibition of the late Algerian artist Hamid Zénati in Noord -Africa, where he lived and worked. It is a thorough, dynamic show that spans more than five decades of both Zénati’s work and that of simultaneous artists, making the mutual connections of the modernist movement in North Africa.
Hamid Zénati (1944-2022) was an autodidactic artist born in Constantijn, Algeria, under French occupation. After moving to Germany as a young man, he mainly worked as a translator. He made art between varied jobs and compulsively marked every surface that is available with lively geometric and organic forms in his self -described “all -over” style.
This exhibition shows that range of creative output, including textile, found objects, wearables and ceramics. Zénati mainly used a process that is similar to monoprinting or stamping, using cut and painted stencils made from paper, cardboard, foil and other materials to print and repeat forms in varied colors. In the resulting works, vibrating colors work in choreographed arrangements of shapes that withdraw, store and overlap, set within an intense chromatic rhythm. The lack of a focal point or directional orientation, and all title -free, the compositions suggest a continuation outside the object itself, to an infinite repetition.
The exhibition title, The birds chirk above the tree, References a family -anecdote about the first sentence to learn a young Zénati when he secretly studied Arabic, which was forbidden during French colonial rule. He would also be fluent in Diija, French, Arabic, English and German. For me, Zénati’s visual cacophony refers to collisions of language: the tongues in which people think and speak and that of someone’s environment all actively co -exist and Jibber Jabboren. These shapes and colors feel like fragments of that soundtrack, as an alternative stark, melodic, loud, whispered and throat fire; Sometimes tightly orchestrated and sometimes wild chaotic.
Smart curatorial decisions by Nadine Nour el Din with the support of Anna Schneider reinforce Zénati’s manic art-all aesthetics-the space is beautifully busy, layered and full of work everywhere you hang around smart, on walls, upper pedestals and in the room. The exhibition design is also a smart nod to the way Zénati often presented his work. Because he has no access to traditional locations, he often created spontaneous mobile exhibitions, took the work in a suitcase for public display and sometimes played with that packaged textile.
An adjacent gallery presents a biographical picture of Zénati through a collection of personal photos, carpets and books that indicate its broad, eclectic influences. A selection from his record collection plays in the corner, and the olfactory artist Dana El-Masri was commissioned to make two scents for the exhibition, presented in the Ceramic Bowls lid. One, called “Nafs (Self, Spirit, Breath)” (2025)“ is intended to call the artist himself through a mix of amber, tobacco and Somali incense. This part of the exhibition felt very intimate, almost like a studio babe; The personal items create a feeling of the artist as a whole person and represent a more inventive way to show biography than just wall text or timelines.
In order to relieve the exchange of ideas and influences that moved through the region during his life, the trustees also selected works that represent works of Zénati, including the loose and abstract botanical compositions of Souhila Bel Bahar; Well Mahdaoui’s beautifully structured graphic calligraphy; And a selection of works by Dia azzawi, whose theoretical and aesthetic ideas about temporality have influenced a wide range of Arab artistic thinking schools. This exhibition is indeed not only a recovery by a single artist, but an important addition to the plate of an active, interconnected, modernist movement in North Africa.
Hamid Zénati: the birds chirk above the tree Continue in B7L9 Art Center (La Marsa, Tunisia) until July 20. The exhibition was compiled by Nadine Nour El Din with Anna Schneider.
