INTERVIEW Michelle Michewicz
PUBLISHED 9 AUG 26
Zeineb Kaabi’s artistic focus lies in the tension between humans and their environment. She is looking into how societies transform ecosystems through their relationship with water, land, and raw materials. She is presenting these topics in an immersive way through projection-based animations that engage with generative imaging processes.
// How would you describe your artistic practice?
My practice sits at the intersection of academic research and experimental, technical experience. What stays constant is the intention: to create a space for emotional experience and to question reality. I work a lot with environmental, social, and cultural issues, and I move across many mediums, often deliberately choosing more technical ones as a way of challenging myself. Media art and video art are the mediums I return to most.
// What is your artistic background, and how does it influence the way you approach art?
I don’t have a formal artistic background. I studied social and cultural anthropology, and alongside that I taught myself graphic design and gradually more technical software. Both disciplines feed into my practice: anthropology gave me a method for research, for fieldwork, for analyzing a problem and, more importantly, for knowing how to ask the right questions. It gave me references and the tools of a researcher, even if my training was academic rather than artistic. Graphic design, and what I learned afterward, gave me the ability to experiment and manipulate tools with more ease. In truth, I’m a self-taught artist. I approach art as both an observer and a researcher, always trying to experiment and push against the limits of what I know.
// How do you usually work? Can you describe your creative process?
I start from questions around a theme or an idea, then go into dense research: data, information, online archives, whatever I can find on the subject. Sometimes I conduct interviews or go into the field. I cross-reference everything I gather, and that process almost always leads to more questions rather than answers. I translate those questions into visual elements and start experimenting from there. The output isn’t really the goal; the process is. What matters to me is which questions I choose to put forward, not to answer them, but to open a space for reflection.
// How do you know when a work is finished?
Honestly, this is the hardest part. I have a bit of an artist’s syndrome: I’m rarely fully satisfied with an outcome, and I struggle with knowing when to step away from a piece. It’s less a decision than a feeling, a sense that maybe this is it, and that the visuals are now in conversation with something, in a way that’s probably specific to every artist. For me, a work is never truly finished. Sometimes I simply reach a point and decide to develop it further in a next phase. Sometimes the choice feels random, or I feel overwhelmed by the project itself. It’s really an emotional, gut-level decision.
// What is your contribution to SEE DJERBA 2026, and how is it connected to this year’s theme, Akros/Entanglement?
My project, Tiles of Time, explores tiles in other forms and other logics. The logic of tiles is itself a logic of connection and entanglement, and I wanted the tiles to reflect on the human condition: the designs, the technique, and how, eventually, all of that can tell a story, the story of exile, of travel, of the traces our ancestors left behind.
// What conversations do you hope your work will start?
I want to start a conversation about turning what seems ordinary into the extraordinary, and about questioning the heritage we leave behind. Tiles have become so normalized, so much a part of daily life, that we tend to see them only as beautiful and decorative, nothing more. My question is: how can we see them differently, and what would that shift in perception actually mean? What message do these tiles carry forward without us realizing it?
// What does entanglement mean to you?
For me, entanglement holds the power to represent the complexity of the social fabric. Taken subjectively, it’s a web of connections and disconnections unfolding across time and space: it can be physical, like fabric and textile, but also social, and even cultural, in our relationship to the cosmos and its complexity. Entanglement, for me, crosses all of these registers at once; they align with each other in a kind of harmonious chaos.
// Is there a material, image, or symbol that you associate with entanglement?
Knots, and the act of weaving a tapestry.
// Do you think art should ask questions, provide answers, or both?
For me, art should ask questions. That’s what gives space, time, and tools for reflection. It can provide answers too, sometimes, but its real necessity lies in shedding light on certain issues and in the relationship it opens between artist and audience. I think of Deleuze here: art isn’t there to resolve, it’s there to create the conditions for thought.
// What inspires you outside the art world?
Everyday life: the normal and the abnormal, and the complexity underneath both. My academic background trained me to always look beneath the surface, to dig deeper, and that’s still what I do. I observe, I take note, and then I let it go.