//Can you tell us about your artistic background and how it has shaped your creative practice?
I primarily work with sculpture and installation, as well as film. My practice examines spaces and objects that we encounter in everyday life. I am particularly interested in public space, as it is a space that is used and shaped by many different people, while its design is shaped by different functions, interests, and political decisions, revealing something about the histories of governments and their visions for society. At the same time, I am interested in how individuals claim and reshape these spaces for themselves, how established structures and rules are used, adapted, and sometimes subtly circumvented to create more personal forms of use. I am interested in the spaces between what is prescribed and what is actually practiced, and in how people continuously negotiate and reinterpret the structures that surround them.
At the same time, I am strongly interested in materials. I often translate specific objects into a different material. The language and history embedded in a material are important aspects of this process. Questions surrounding the use of materials, processes of production, and their histories accompany my work and shape the way I approach an object or situation.
//Is there a particular message, idea, or question that you hope your work invites audiences to reflect on?
I hope that the viewer is first and foremost guided by the material itself. In this work, I wanted the Khicha to appear somewhat unfamiliar. Its physical qualities become particularly visible because they contrast with its original function. Khicha is made to withstand use: it is used for scrubbing and cleaning, and is expected to endure friction, pressure, and repeated use. In the work, however, the material becomes quite vulnerable.
This vulnerability emerged partly through the process of making the work. In order to construct the pattern of the pavement, the Khicha had to be cut into smaller pieces and separated from its original structure. Once divided, the material loses some of its strength and has to be repaired and held together again in different places. I find this change in the material particularly interesting: something that was originally made to endure becomes more fragile when it is separated and reassembled.
This also opens up a broader reflection for me about how materials, objects, and forms of use can change when they are removed from their original context. Khicha is a material strongly associated with domestic cleaning and is predominantly used by women. By bringing it into a public context and transforming its function, I hope to encourage a reconsideration of the material itself, its everyday use, and the associations and forms of labour connected to it.
//What challenges did you encounter while developing this project, and were there any unexpected discoveries along the way?
The material was certainly challenging to work with. In many places, the Khicha would come apart during the process and had to be sewn back together repeatedly. At first, this was something I had to deal with as a difficulty in the making process. Eventually, however, I decided to embrace it and see the repeated stitching and repairing as part of the work itself. Rather than trying to hide the vulnerability of the material, I allowed it to become visible.
During the design phase, I made many sketches in order to find the specific section of the pavement that I found most interesting as a composition. For the second work, I consciously decided to break up the existing pattern to a certain extent rather than reproducing it exactly. This allowed me to move further away from simply translating the pavement and to think about how the pattern could be transformed through the material.
I also repeatedly went to the Halfaouine market in Tunis to buy new Khicha. I became very particular about selecting them, sometimes standing at the stalls for quite a while and carefully comparing the subtle differences in colour, texture, and density. The sellers probably thought I was a little crazy, but this process made me increasingly aware of how much these small material differences can influence the final work.