Selma Feriani Gallery presents three Tunisian artists to Art Basel Basel

Selma Feriani Gallery will present three Tunisian artists at Art Basel Basel this month, bringing Monia Ben Hamouda, Mohamed Amine Hamouda and Nidhal Chamekh to one of the world’s leading contemporary art fairs.

The presentation, titled Rituals of Fracture, will be shown in the fair’s Première section, Booth P12. Art Basel Basel runs from June 18 to 21, with preview days on June 16 and 17.

The project brings together painting, sculpture, installation and drawing. Its language is one of matter and memory: spices, soil, clay, plant fibres, paper, documents, images and traces.

Monia Ben Hamouda works with spices, soil and clay in large compositions shaped by gesture, ritual and inheritance. Her paintings have a tactile quality, with surfaces that seem to hold powder, colour and residue. The materials evoke domestic life, protection, prayer and the intimate gestures through which belief and memory pass from one generation to another. At Basel, her wall based painting is divided across two canvases. It brings together the scale of contemporary painting and the sensory charge of materials more often associated with the home, the body and ritual practice.

Mohamed Amine Hamouda was born in Gabès in 1981 and continues to live and work there. A visual artist and teacher researcher, he has developed a practice closely tied to the maritime oasis of Gabès, a landscape of exceptional ecological and cultural importance. His work draws on natural and artisanal processes. He produces inks, papers and supports from local plant matter, including henna, palm leaves, olives and corchorus. Through these materials, his work opens onto biodiversity, craft knowledge, environmental change and the quiet intelligence of inherited techniques. Gabès appears in his work as source, material and memory. The oasis, the sea, the plants and the pressures placed on the local environment all enter the artistic process. His works invite the viewer to look closely at what grows, what is transformed and what remains.

Nidhal Chamekh works with drawing, installation and archival fragments. His practice often begins with documents, maps, political photographs, faces and images drawn from history. He is interested in the ways memory is kept, interrupted or altered. His works have the precision of research and the sensitivity of drawing. A document may become a line. A face may become a trace. A political image may be opened again through the hand. In Rituals of Fracture, his presence gives the presentation a historical and archival depth.

Selma Feriani Gallery was first established in London and is now also based in Tunis, where it operates from a large contemporary art space in La Goulette. The gallery represents artists from Tunisia, North Africa, the Middle East and beyond, and has taken part in major international fairs including Art Basel, Frieze, Art Dubai and Abu Dhabi Art.

Its Tunis space, opened in its current form in January 2024, is located in the Kheireddine industrial zone of La Goulette. Designed by architect Chacha Atallah, the 2,000 square metre gallery offers generous exhibition rooms and a setting suited to ambitious contemporary installations.

For readers in Tunisia, Selma Feriani Gallery can be visited at 32 Rue Ibn Nafis, Z.I. Kheireddine, La Goulette, 2015. It is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10am to 1pm and 2pm to 6pm, with Monday visits by appointment.

Readers in London and abroad can follow the gallery’s exhibitions, artists and fair programme through Selma Feriani Gallery online.