Event | Before we even enter, we are warned: “Children, pregnant women and agnostics, do not exceed the recommended visit time: 29 minutes”, can be read in the leaflet of the exhibition among a list of ironic “security rules” to respect for who wants to enter the AMMAR FARHAT gallery of Sidi Bou Saïd.
Because the visit of the exhibition of Aïcha Snoussi, “Golgotha”, whose opening took place yesterday Sunday, September 28, is in itself an experience.
“Golgotha”: the word means “skull”, and this is the name of the hill near Jerusalem where Jesus would have been crucified. Hill also called “Calvary”, a name that perfectly describes the scenes that the young artist has drawn in ink, on huge canvases covering the walls or on smaller format paper, which are both disgusting and fascinating.
A laboratory specializing in “insemination of faith”
Here, Golgotha is a laboratory. A specialized “metaphysical” laboratory “in the insemination of faith”, where men with naked and emaciated bodies, the “guinea pigs”, undergo various experiences intended to “modify them spiritually”. Aïcha Snoussi, with a singular sense of detail, wanted to describe the process by which a man becomes a believer, and which according to her is nothing natural.
“Faith, for me, is something that we are grafted from the outside,” explains Aïcha Snoussi, who quotes pell-mell what inspired her to make his works: “Judeo-Christianity, Sex, Sado-Masochism with the idea of pleasure in pain, food. »Shift of flesh and guts, blood puddles, organ grafts, eyes out of their orbits, aspiration and ingestion of the brain, dissection … Nothing is spared the visitor who wanders in the three successive rooms of the gallery/laboratory:” Caldarium “,” Backroom “and” Frigidarium “.
A torment of the suffered and voluntary faith
In this horror laboratory, where the torture is both suffered and voluntary, the viscera merge with the electric wires of the machine to “instill the faith”, piloted by an organ on which play with the hands cut with the hooked fingers. The “guinea pigs” are removed from all humanity, soul and body.
The experience is all the stronger since the exhibition blends completely into the place, and the features of the different drawings extend on the walls, connecting the works between them.
“Aïcha Gorgi (which holds the Ammar Farhat gallery) made space at my disposal saying to me:” Do what you want with it, “says Aïcha Snoussi. It became a laboratory where I put everything I had in my head a little. »»
“She is very promising!” », Enthuses Aïcha Gorgi. At just 25 years old, the young artist has indeed already carried out several exhibitions.
“Golgotha” will be visible at the Ammar Farhat gallery of Sidi Bou Saïd (3 rue Sidi El Ghemrini) until October 26.
