Calvino: Beyond The Visible
Ahmed Ben Nessib, Aymen Mbarki, Kamal Zakour, Othman Selmi, Seif Eddine Nechi, Sonia Ben Selem
Curated by Abir Gasmi and Anna Gabai

Organized by the Italian Cultural Institute of Tunis as part of the Calvino In Tunis Series, October 17 – November 30, 2023; Millefeuilles Bookstore, La Marsa.

How can one interpret a story or an idea through images?

At first, the task seems daunting and incongruous. Yet, that is precisely what we asked six artists to do: select a novel by Italo Calvino and translate it into images, even if they were unfamiliar with his work. They had to discover the author, read him, digest him, dream about him, make his stories their own, explore the hidden corners of his oeuvre, and finally, like alchemists, transform his words into drawings.

It is in the corners and crevices of language, in the spaces in between, where a hidden, underground narrative can be found—one that words cannot fully capture, but which images freeze, like a drop of water in the heart of winter. Calvino’s stories are full of these hidden spaces. His books are half-open doors leading to entire universes, and his sentences do what writing does best: they suggest, indicate, and conceal to reveal. His subtly, light, playful, and evocative prose transforms each reader into an imaginary illustrator.

But more than merely illustrating the text, the images in this exhibition suggest what the written word cannot say or manifest. They go beyond the visible. The result is an enchanting and kaleidoscopic exhibition where refined blacks and whites intertwine with vibrant colors, shadows dance with glimmers of light, and tiny creatures find the space we never knew they needed.

These illustrations make us feel at home by drawing on familiar motifs and stories while illuminating new dimensions of Calvino’s prose that we had not previously considered. They transcend their role as mere complements to the text, allowing us to discover a microcosm—that of each artist—whose imagination draws from the writer’s nuances yet maintains its unique substance. The works combine two creative realities that overlap and blend surprisingly, uniting opposites in the same space: classicism and experimentation, light and darkness, color and black and white…

Like the Ligurian author, these artists have embarked on a journey through worlds and eras, using their talents to allow us to experience an aesthetic encounter that transcends the every day without abandoning it. Instead, it enriches it, making it more lovable and comprehensible.

While walking through a Ligurian forest, for a brief moment, it seemed to me as though I saw Cosimo, the Baron in the Trees, dashing among the branches of oaks and chestnuts. Calvino had an extensive knowledge of plants and nature and a profound love for his Ligurian mountains, which rise steeply above the Mediterranean. He could have boarded a ship in Genoa and reached Tunis, moving from one city of alleyways and palaces to another, rich in narrow streets and grand buildings. I can picture him pausing along the avenues of Tunis to observe which trees grow there, taking a moment to cool himself beneath their canopy. During such a walk, he might have dreamed up a new invisible city—a welcoming city colored by pink and orange bougainvillea.

In preparing for the exhibition, I read the books the artists had chosen as their sources of inspiration. At times, when I came across particularly detailed passages, I wondered how these might influence the illustrations and whether those phrases would be perceived as too restrictive. Predictably, I was proven wrong. Each artist interpreted the works through their own unique perspective.

My curiosity to see the paintings grew weekly: What would I recognize? How would the landscape be transformed?

We can recognize Agilulfo, the Nonexistent Knight, in Ahmed Ben Nessib’s work. He walks pensively among bats and lampposts, sleepless and full of existential doubts like Nat King Cole swearing that it will be forever when he falls in love. It is a nocturnal scene set in the dark, deserted streets of a city, which bears traces of daytime activity like the camp in the novel. Yet, the protagonist finds a way to carve out a space for meditation.

The empty armor of the Nonexistent Knight as a metaphor for artificial intelligence—a double-edged sword of our creativity—is perfectly captured in the illustrations by Seif Eddine Nechi. Here, Agilulfo is not the sole protagonist; his squire, Gurdulù, also has a place. The artist thus manages to give form to the dichotomy at the heart of this novel: the personification of rules and discipline in contrast with instinct. The knight’s colorful plume stands out amidst the blue and white that characterize these digital illustrations and echoes the colored pencil drawing that portrays the four main characters as puppets reminiscent of Sicilian marionettes. Here, the rational Agilulfo, the impulsive Rambaldo, the passionate Bradamante, and the exuberant Gurdulù regain a classical physicality that would have been understood even at Charlemagne’s court.

Italian folk tales come to life thanks to the vibrant colors and whimsical creatures that inhabit Sonia Bensalem’s works. In one illustration, a young man sleeps alongside a dog and a cat. In the background, the phrase “fairy tales are true…” hints at what they are dreaming. In another beautiful panel, creatures of the sky and sea gather around a giant resting beneath a large tree: an octopus, many small birds, a few donkeys, queens, and cottages—so many loving details drawn with the same care as the characters in the third illustration, where they tidy another giant’s beard using rakes.

Thanks to Aymen Mbarki’s flowing lines, the characters from the complex novel If on a Winter’s Night, a Traveler become perfectly comprehensible. A play of volumes characterizes the illustrations: the delicate features of people engrossed in reading are framed by bolder lines that guide the eye across the three illustrations. In this work, aged paper creates a welcoming environment for the black ink, giving it even greater depth.

Othman Selmi brings us into the treetops to chase after Cosimo, the rebellious baron who will never descend again. Selmi gives the work a contemporary touch, choosing almost pastel-like colors and capturing all the love the protagonist feels—for freedom, his friends, Viola, and the forest. In the illustration where young Cosimo reads to the bandit Gian dei Brughi, all these themes come together: the young baron, with an open book, sits on the back of the bandit, crammed into a cell too small for him. A blossoming tattoo adorns the bandit’s giant arm, and small trees grow at his feet.

Then, Abir Gasmi and Kamal Zakkour created the three new invisible cities, suspended between shadows and sea breezes. Fiorita, Spaventata, and Pretenziosa are projections of the soul drawn in charcoal on paper. Many of us would love to live forever in Fiorita. Still, we know all too well that without knowing Spaventata and Pretenziosa, we would never appreciate the value of the city where “restless souls find peace.”

The search for the proper nails to support so much beauty led me to a small hardware store, where an attentive and precise apprentice helped me. We chose small, dark nails—discreet yet intense—and hammered them into the white walls, freshly repainted for the occasion. There was a dance of the paintings until one evening, after sunset, everything fell into place, and we left, satisfied. We hung books on the walls to share the stories we had loved with all those who came to visit.

Once everything is in place, there is that slightly dizzying moment when you look around and remember the empty room when everything was still packed against the walls. Yes, something could still be changed. No, everything will stay just as it is.

Calvino would have liked it.

The catalouge “Calvino a Tunisi,” edited by Chiara Comito, will be published by Mesogea at the end of November 2024.

_Abir Gasmi and Anna Gabai

Sumac Dialogues is a place for being vocal. Here, authors and artists get together in conversations, interviews, essays and experimental forms of writing. We aim to create a space of exchange, where the published results are often the most visible manifestations of relations, friendships and collaborations built around Sumac Space. If you would like to share a collaboration proposal, please feel free to write us. We warmly invite you to follow us on Instagram and to subscribe to our newsletter and stay connected.

The post Calvino: Beyond The Visible—Abir Gasmi and Anna Gabai appeared first on Sumac Space.

The exhibition Dear Fractured Stones evokes an image similar to the one drawn in Mehdi Akhavan Sales’s poem, “Katibeh” (Inscription), a poem telling the story of a group of people chained together on a cursed moonlit night. Similar to the characters of the poem but with looser and lighter chains, the artists presented in this exhibition work together to “turn” the stone. And as they “turn” their inscriptions they seek to reveal the secrets of that which is unsaid. But in this process of “turning” the stone over hours and days – not moments and minutes – they find themselves silent in shock, where their main action is that of remembering. The artists all look back and remember, but stone neither remembers nor forgets; instead, it continues to collect and to record and to carry the burden which it then passes down.

Stone as a material is comprised of mineral bonds; in its essence it is becoming rather than being, and this becoming is a process occurring over time with changes and observations. It is as if stone records its observations in layers, “turning” itself into an archive of the known even as it is an archive of a selection of bodily sediments. The stone takes events in and then accumulates their traces in the style of a documentary. It is a thing of the past with its historicity; however, time never stops within it but rather the stone encompasses the dialectic between the past and the present. Indeed, it is for this very reason that stone needs to be cut to be read. When a stone is broken, it cannot be remedied or mended, and in this sense, the narratives within are unveiled and disseminated immediately. At this moment, the untold is revealed. From this point on, the rigid reports of the past are not only divulged but also precarious. Another account is added to the memory of the past, but then it is cast away until it will become someone else’s concern one day. In this manner, Baharak Omidfard builds, through the nine artistic interpretations of this material stone, an intertextual network in the exhibition “Dear Fractured Stones”. In this collection, Omidfard addresses not only stone, but broken stones, stones which have been cast away and scattered, separated into pieces of an older body. Here, the stone which is normally used to break is now itself broken. In this sense, a piece of stone is like a material that finds a new nature and “transforms” into the agent of a unique narrative in a different form and medium; yet, one which is still connected with other narratives. 

Throughout the history of art, stone has always found a new shape through both the process of being carved and through the removal of excessive parts, an act which diverts attention from the material to the form. In subsequent art forms which replaced the work with the idea, stone could be then present in its natural form. Nowadays, meaning is created not only through acts of reduction, but also, sometimes, through the addition of another material, or at other times, through the altering of the background. This means that the stone itself matters, and it is no longer simply a material subservient to other content. This was the moment when stone became a historical-archival material. In contrast to its physical nature, this hard material is actually fluid and flowing when faced with history and the past; at times welcoming effacement yet always prepared to be refreshed and renewed. Thus, the artist’s activism in “Dear Fractured Stones” casts doubt on and questions official reports through the use of this very quality contained in the stone. Indeed, the significance of this exhibition is that the artworks – regardless of their past contexts and presentations – remind us of the possibility of reading unreliable texts and establishing new layers, adding to the stone’s archival state. In this exhibition, the artists seek to liberate reality from the dominance of the familiar – and sometimes manipulated – historical and official reports. 

The archive of a stone is when nature, earth, and geography bond with humans and historical events in such a way, that through the mediation of one, another becomes available. Using nine different approaches, the nine artists in this exhibition, linked through one history and geography – yet nevertheless in different parts of the world – present nine different narratives. The narratives of the artists, whether they are in Iran or not, are rooted in their memories of and their lived experiences in Iran, and ultimately, in their concerns about Iran. The works stand together through a common characteristic: the archival and sociopolitical state of stone located in this specific geography of Iran. Disengaged from power, stone is able to narrate social reports and reflect political affairs, not from the view of the powerful, nor from the annals of official accounts, but from the perspective of the people. In this way, the stone is on the people’s side and stands with them at night when “moonlight pours damnation upon us”. The works in this collection place stone in a position that symbolizes the gathered collective social energy that has to be released and freed. With the intervention of art, stone enters into the sociopolitical discourse without departing from its natural essence. 

Broken stones — whether they be as large as rocks, as small as pebbles, or perhaps even reduced to dust; whether located in the hands of one or upon the grave of another; whether valued and worn as part of a ring, or shaped for the conducting of local traditions, or even used to designate or destroy property lines — are, as historical observers, always ready to testify. Stones are impartial observers of events, of resistances, of dethronings, and of inaugurations. Since they are prone to gradual erosion, the results of their observations always need to be recorded by someone. Indeed, every time a new event adds a new layer to this archive, someone is required to “turn” the stone over. When people of vision “turn” the stone, they do so by annotating the historical inscriptions and not by seeking to develop a resplendent canon. They shape a metaphorical network of freed narratives just like the eternal “turning over” of the inscription in Akhavan Sales’s “Katibeh”: 

He shall know my secret 
who turns me over!

¹ Allusion to a line in Mehdi Akhavan Sales’s “Katibeh” (Inscription): “And we remained silent”.
Mehdi Akhavan Sales (1929–1990) was an Iranian poet whose works deal with historical, social, and political themes using an epic tone and are indebted to classic Persian poetry. In 1961, Akhavan composed “Katibeh” (Inscription), which refers to the dominant social and political oppression at the time. The poem can be summarized as follows: A group of people are in chains in a place like a mountain. A voice directs their attention to read a secret on a nearby inscription. However, the group endures the situation in silence and passivity until a moonlit night when they cannot endure it any more. One of them, whose chain is loose, climbs up to the inscription and reads: He shall know my secret who turns me over! Struggling painfully, the group then works together to turn the stone. Again, one of them with a lighter chain climbs up and reads in surprise after taking his time:
“He shall know my secret
who turns me over!”

Sumac Dialogues is a place for being vocal. Here, authors and artists get together in conversations, interviews, essays and experimental forms of writing. We aim to create a space of exchange, where the published results are often the most visible manifestations of relations, friendships and collaborations built around Sumac Space. If you would like to share a collaboration proposal, please feel free to write us. We warmly invite you to follow us on Instagram and to subscribe to our newsletter and stay connected.

The post And We Remain Silent for a While—Akram Ahmadi Tavana appeared first on Sumac Space.

A:D: Curatorial hosted Zahra Zeinali’s exhibition au-delà from July 15^th to August 30^th. The exhibition brings together a series of Zahra Zeinali’s paintings and installations from the last three years for her first solo show in Berlin, Germany. 

In au-delà, Zahra Zeinali uses the prism of her experiences as an Iranian immigrant to examine themes of exile, displacement, and trauma. She employs this to explore the sensations and memories of loneliness and vulnerability, expressing the agony and concussion of being uprooted and forced to navigate an unknown backdrop. In the following text, we extend an invitation to read about four series featured in the exhibition: Perdu (2020), REM (2021), Elle ferma les yeux (2021), and Adaptation (2021-2022).

The Perdu series (2020) marked a significant turning point in Zahra Zeinali’s life. After spending seven years in Paris, she returned to Iran with a strong desire to rediscover a sense of belonging that had eluded her in her adopted country. However, upon her return, she found that both she and her homeland had undergone significant changes, leading to a profound disconnection between them. This resulted in a feeling of rootlessness, characterized by loneliness, emptiness, and uncertainty.

During this period of self-exploration, Zeinali focused on questions of identity, reflecting on her past and present self, while also delving into her inner world with great curiosity. This introspective journey revealed a hidden realm of depth and complexity that, unknown to her, had silently accompanied her throughout her life. In her paintings from this phase, the use of color was notably limited to white, red, and black hues. She believed that vibrant colors represented the external world, whereas the inner world required a more muted representation.

The narrative of her work revolved around a central figure, a young girl, surrounded by personal artifacts such as vintage dolls from Parisian second-hand stores, self-made masks, fabrics, and theater-inspired puppets. These elements were arranged in front of a dimly lit backdrop, evoking a theatrical stage where the unfolding drama takes place in an obscure black box, hidden from the audience’s full view. This symbolic approach conveyed the idea that human perception provides only a partial glimpse of truth, much like witnessing only a fraction of events backstage. Zeinali assumed the role of a theatrical director, skillfully orchestrating these representations on the stage to manifest various states of mind and inner emotions – a manifestation rooted in a cognitive perspective.

The series REM (2021) and Elle ferma les yeux (2021-2022) continued to focus on the inner world she had discovered – a realm characterized by contradictions, fears, and dreams, akin to the enigmatic nature of dreams or nightmares. Zeinali translated this peculiar inner world onto canvas, naming the collection “PARADOX SLEEP (REM)”. This denotes the state between deep slumber and wakefulness, where reality and imagination converge, echoing the essence of her paintings.

The paintings in these series featured doll-like figures often shrouded in shadows, resembling theatrical scenes. The overall outlook towards the world and reality was somewhat pessimistic and bitter. The backgrounds of the paintings avoided depicting specific locations or spaces, emphasizing the emergence of the characters from darkness, like figures on a theater stage. Zeinali’s choice of colors remained limited, with a focus on using acrylic as her medium, resulting in expressive and emotionally intense paintings from subjective perspectives.

The series Elle ferma les yeux (2021) was influenced by a deeply unfortunate event in her life toward the end of 2021, the impact of which resounded until late 2022. During this period, new colors, such as blue and yellow, were introduced, imbued with symbolic meanings. As a result, the artworks gradually incorporated surrealistic procedure, prompting contemplation on death and the intricacies of the human subconscious. This phase revealed Zahra Zeinali’s newfound sense of independence in her expression.

The essence of each entity’s existence, as perceived by the artist, holds a bitter and disconcerting truth. As she delved deeper into exploration, more unsettling facets of this truth surfaced. This newfound understanding of the world significantly influenced the artist’s actions and mindset, leading her to question the very meaning and purpose of life.She grapples with the daunting task of navigating life in a peculiar and fearsome world. This internal struggle gave rise to the Adaptation (2021-2022) series. In these artworks, subtle shifts in the main characters’ dispositions are portrayed, reflecting a sense of acceptance of one’s circumstances and a confrontation with enigmatic and unsettling realities. This phase is deemed crucial and challenging, as it supports reconciliation of the artist’s relationship with both herself and the world.

Technically, Zahra Zenali embarks on a journey into unknown territory by using relatively large canvases for the first time. The characters in the artworks move from unfamiliar spaces to more familiar places that remind us of untouched nature. The artworks show the coexistence of unique entities and characters, blending together harmoniously in a single frame, without any resistance or conflict. Her subsequent works, while not explicitly labeled as part of the Adaptation series, continue to be strongly influenced by her explorations during this period.

_ In conversation with Zahra Zeinali

Zahra Zeinali (b. 1975) completed her bachelor’s degree in painting from the Islamic Azad University of Tehran and worked as an art instructor for fifteen years. She developed an interest in photography and studied analog photography at the House of Iranian Photographers. In 2012, Zahra relocated to Paris to continue her artistic journey as a painter. Later, in 2022, she completed her studies at the EFET Photographie École. This milestone prompted her to explore merging the two techniques in her recent works. Additionally, she commenced her role as an art teacher for children and young students at Le Cercle des Arts in 2022, allowing her to tap into the realm of childhood inspiration.  Zeinali has participated in several groups and solo exhibitions, including the recent Le Pays des Merveilles, Le Monde Invisible at Galerie Claire Corcia, and Alerte Rouge at Galerie Linda Farrell, Femme Vie Liberté at Galerie Sahar K. Boluki, Artcité à Fontenay, Comparaison au Grand Palais Éphémère, and Figuration Critique à Salon de Dessin Paris, among others.

A:D: Curatorial runs by two young curators from the USA and Ukraine, Christy Woody and Maria Isserlis, the mission of the space is to focus on creating a platform for today’s innovative artists to be heard in a non-commercial environment. Inviting artists from around the world, we aim to keep the cultural bridges open for collaborations, exchanges, and the development of new works. Through young, vibrant voices in the current art and music scene, we would like to thoughtfully reflect on the current political, social and environmental climate and progress with a successful example of cooperation in the field of art and culture in Berlin.

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