His Excellency Jens Plötner, German ambassador to Tunisia, gave his residence on Wednesday, November 7, a reception on the occasion of the exhibition “Rosige Zukunft” Wednesday in Berlin.
To present the exhibition, Mr Jens Plötner first started by saying his admiration and his encouragement for the Tunisian Revolution, and for those who had done it and continue to do it.
In his introduction, he did not escape His Excellency to remind assistance the exhilarating role of art in revolutions: art is resistance. He had cited an anecdote in the history of the city of Cologne, where musicians had played music in the cathedral of the city fell into ruins.
In the catalog that was offered to the guests, we can read this:
“The exhibition” A future in pink, current art in Tunisia “is the fourth in the” Connect “series of IFA galleries in Berlin and Stuttgart, it allows us to shed light on current artistic creation in Tunisia, after the Revolution. The artists, men and women, selected for this project, live and work in Tunisia, they participated in historical upheavals and they were witnesses ”
It is therefore Tunisian artists that it is a question, who, with the collaboration of the IFA galleries and the Goethe Institute, went to exhibit their works in Berlin. This current Tunisian art, is perceived for many Tunisians and foreign observers, as “the expression of a freedom that no force can annihilate”. The choice of title is not fortuitous: “A future in pink for Tunisian art, after a purple past and a present dotted with black obstacles” Christine Bruckbauer, art historian, lecturer at the University of Manouba and independent art critic describes him so well in his introduction of the exhibition: “If events and speeches can be distorted, art remains a receptacle and at least lively and subversive “
The choice of the ten Tunisian artists selected for this exhibition, and who benefited from a stay in Berlin to accompany their works, however, cares the attention to say a problem. Mainly city dwellers living in the capital, they are quite well known on the Tunisian artistic scene. We cite, for example, Aicha Filali, Mohamed Ben Slama, Moufida Fadhéla, or Sonia Kallel. They all studied university studies in Tunisia and abroad and regularly exhibit in art galleries that are stores in Tunis. Some of them were still participating, last October in the Dream City Biennial.
The question that arises naturally is as follows: why are it always the same artists who benefit from foreign subsidies and aid of cooperation institutes? Why do we not see young artists, oh so talented, regions of the interior and disadvantaged areas in such demonstrations, why do they never benefit from these “favors”? Where does the problem reside? In the communication of embassies and institutes which generally operate in the capital, or in the fact that young artists do not make the effort to present their works and take them out in broad daylight? Is it simply a lack of communication or a real will for the very closed circle of artists to always?
The answer to all these questions puts us in front of two evidences: first of all, the choice of artists does not obey objective criteria, then, it is according to the guidelines of benefactors that the artistic genre is made.
The history of art in Tunisia, testifies to a truth which is renewed since the beginning of independence: a group collects all the advantages and profits to the detriment of all Tunisian artists. Do it act of a curse which means that the plastic arts, in Tunisia, remain minorized and unable to register for the universal history? What can we ask the Westerners who make the effort to reach out?
