Written by: Rafram Chaddad
Yes, I am amazed each time I return to the Hara, looking at the walls of my own life, only to run into another giant colorful painting from some Brazilian/British artist. These works are getting bigger and bigger, transforming the Hara into a Luna park that might excite some tourists, but is deleting my old world.
I am propelled to express my opinion on the Djerbahood project in the Hara Sghira, the small Jewish quarter on the island of Djerba off the coast of Tunisia. Not only because I was born there, a place in which my mother’s family has lived for the past 2700 years, but because I am a visual artist who works primarily in non-commercial spaces and has even done a small mural of a hand holding five fish, known for fighting the evil eye in our Djerbian tradition.
When I paint it on a new house entry in Djerba, the work gains quasi-functional quality. I have also worked for some time now on memories of women in my family and how generational trauma has been passed down through their experiences.
Djerbahood is a ‘street art project carried out on houses in the Hara Sghira. Mural artists from all over the world were brought in to paint on the walls of the old Hara. This project receives generous support from the EU, the Tunisian art establishment, and the culture ministry. In terms of tourism, this project has been a success. Buses stop there now, on the way to the nearby famous El Ghriba synagogue. They stop, snap photos of the murals, buy maybe a giant amphora with the same painting, and continue on their way.
The history of murals and street has a rich history of political, activism, and social justice. From Mexico City, Belfast, East Berlin, New York City, and the separation wall in Palestine. in Tunisia, the situation is such that the visual art scene is not reflective, personal, or critical, but rather decorative or modernist.
The history of this art practice should be studied, but colonialism, dictatorship, and today’s agents of orientalism want mostly to enjoy the savage beauty rather than deal with our life. Tunisia is a country that is starving for a critical, kicking, and bold visual art scene and a similar street art scene.
Instead, murals projects like Djerbahood and recently in Djebel Jelloud are decorating the houses, claiming they promote them. Local visual artists are also working on these projects without other support, while heavy budgets for art are mainly moving towards these projects.
These projects claim to make poor areas more attractive. But for whom? Perhaps, rather than painting a mural on the walls of poor neighborhoods, you paint the houses white and arrange the trash, benches, and green areas. If you are an artist, you research and connect to the DNA of the place, and you do some work related to it. You don’t arrive at a location and ask the poor inhabitants rhetorically if you can paint on their houses because people with less luck in life can’t answer no. The assumption that you improve people’s lives by painting cats in their homes is almost degrading. That’s not what street art is. It’s decorative art.
Djerbahood could be a thoughtful project if they were to use research-based art practices. That is, learning the history of the Hara, working with the locals, and creating some art intervention that doesn’t simply paint on people’s houses and delete the historical identity of this place.
The Hara is not an abandoned factory or a police station that calls for street artists to show their skills and opinions. It’s an inhabited space with one of the oldest communities on the planet. It’s too easy, especially for the Europeans who sponsor it, to look at this kind of project as a charity, a way to improve the life of locals. Still, without genuinely engaging the people who live in the neighborhood, it’s but another orientalist project.
Yes, I am amazed each time I return to the Hara, looking at the walls of my own life, only to run into another giant colorful painting from some Brazilian/British artist. These works are getting bigger and bigger, transforming the Hara into a Luna park that might excite some tourists, but is deleting my old world.
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Born on the island of Djerba off the coast of Tunisia, Rafram Chaddad (b. 1976) is an artist whose photographs, films, and multi-media installations rethink the archive, migration narratives, and what it means to belong. His work makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar. Chaddad is currently working on Leftovers, a book project investigating how food practices in cities formerly occupied by the Ottoman Empire are inter-connected. The book highlights recipes particular to each place and oral histories around food-making that challenge the nationalization of food and encourage us to approach food as a shared experience.
Working between Tunis and New York, Rafram’s work reflects on his personal life experiences and comments on broader socio-political issues including migration and displacement, identity and belonging. Over the past twenty years, he’s created dozens of short films and installations, which have exhibited worldwide in cultural institutions, galleries, and museums.
Since 2021 Chaddad has been a guest critic in the MFA program of Columbia University.
