Decoding a Work That Can Condense the Spirit of the Exhibited Creations
Plastic arts constantly solicit the senses and excite emotions to give voice to the unspeakable.
Choosing a piece by Houda Ben Hamouda, resonant with the exhibition’s title and the dialogue between art and Carthage, can we truly embrace the whole body of works on display?
An Iconological Reading as an Initiatory Device
Rather than a mere figurative representation, this reading is conceived as an initiatory dispositif.
Houda Ben Hamouda’s painting develops a principal conception of femininity as a civilising energy whose aim is to act as an anthropological mediator and a foundational value of a Mediterranean humanism. The work therefore appears as an exemplary synthesis of contemporary Tunisian art, weaving together plastic modernity and the Carthaginian civilisational heritage.
The Question of Meaning
Is painting, like language, a vector for the production of meanings?
“What does the artist want to say?” – a question often posed by the average Tunisian viewer.
The central inquiry is not what does this canvas depict? but what idea does it make audible, readable, and visible?
Our hypothesis: the canvas is not an image of a woman but a conceptual construction of femininity, understood as a principle of elevation. The work belongs to an initiatory aesthetic:
- It does not merely show, it teaches.
- It does not describe, it transforms.
It seeks to move beyond the figurative toward a symbolic ontology. This is achieved through:
- Extreme stylisation – elongated limbs, volumetric simplification.
- Non‑mimetic chromatics that strip the “figure” of individual identity, turning it into a type, archetype, sign, and symbol.
This process aligns with what art theory calls essentialising abstraction – a mode of representation that does not reproduce reality but extracts its signifying structure, its “substantive marrow.”
Consequently, femininity is no longer presented as flesh to be visually “devoured,” but as a principle to be ruminated, assimilated, and metamorphosed into civic action. The painting enacts an ontological shift: the body becomes status and appearance to be “de‑coded” like a poetic, poietic body‑text.
The figure is elevated to the rank of a symbol of femininity, the essence of femininity transformed into an initiatory passage through the image that is “grazed.”
The musical instrument held by the figure – a tambourine – is not a mere accessory. Anthropologically, it is a symbol of ordering, imposing rhythm on visible sonic chaos. In the work’s symbolic logic:
- Rhythm = culture
- Chaos = raw instinct
Thus the figure mediates nature ↔ civilisation, barbarism ↔ citizenship, embodying the universal archetype of the initiatory guide – comparable to the mythic “wise old civiliser” who leads the instinctive self toward ethical consciousness (the “Maronis” figure).
From this perspective, the canvas is not contemplative but initiatory, wielding pedagogical force and a tactful accompaniment. It functions as a visual rite, a ritual of passage.
From Body to Cortex
The civilising femininity and Mediterranean anthropology of the painting act as an assault on the viewing eye, carrying it toward new horizons under different skies.
The work dialogues silently with a deep cultural memory rooted in ancient Mediterranean civilisation, where women embodied:
- Spiritual authority
- Social mediation
- Principles of continuity and communal regulation
Here, femininity synthesises three fundamental functions:
- Generative / Cosmic vital principle
- Mediating function
- Articulation of force and civilising law, turning energy into a cardinal value
This triad reflects an anthropological vision where culture is born from mastery of impulses. The painted figure therefore becomes a metaphor for civilisation itself.
Carthage’s Echo
Carthage is not far away: the canvas taps the symbolic memory of a plastic modernity that resurges contemporarily, a fertile imagination specific to the Carthage Sea basin. In this cultural space, women held a structuring position in social, religious, and symbolic orders.
The painting thus creates an implicit historical synthesis:
- Stylistic modernity expressed through contemporary plastic language.
- A Mediterranean memory built on cumulative, symbolic substrata – a Carthaginian heritage born within a specific anthropological matrix.
The result is an aesthetic of civilisational continuity: modernity does not break with tradition but translates it plastically.
Unlike the traditional Western nude, often intended for visual pleasure, this figure rejects objectification of the female body. Its lateral, non‑directed gaze is a pictorial strategy of de‑objectivation. The figure does not submit to the viewer; it internally summons them.
Consequently, the relationship is reversed: the image works the gaze, modulating it and inviting the viewer to learn through reflection.
Who Looks at Whom? Who Dissects Whom?
This inversion lies at the heart of the work’s initiatory nature. It invites the observer to become other, to think and to be thought of, cared for by a spirit that heals our vices and idleness.
The artwork‑thought must be taken in as an auditory, visual, and reflexive idea. Every plastic element functions as a concept; together they form a coherent auditory‑visual syntax, equivalent to an emotional philosophical discourse.
Painting, in this sense, is a claim to critical stance and a position within contemporary Tunisian art, achieved through a vivid articulation of:
- Symbolic abstraction
- Cultural memory
- Formal rigor
The piece can be regarded as emblematic of a moment of maturity in Tunisian contemporary painting. It demonstrates a rare capacity: to produce a modernity that is neither Western imitation nor identity‑based folklore, but a plastic transfiguration of revitalised civilisational heritage.
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