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Citizen/Performer: Participatory Performance Art in Post-Revolution Tunisia
Abstract
This paper analyzes two works of performance art from post-revolution Tunisia. Exhibiting a new medium, participatory performance art, the pieces demonstrate the need for analyses that prioritize the relationship between the social and the material, a methodology that may be useful for theorizing performance art, bodies, and public space in multiple contexts. Post-Arab Spring, Tunisians felt a new social freedom, particularly in the early days after January 14, 2011. However, while the political arena opened, major structures had not changed. There was no organized movement to supplant the ousted dictatorship. Many scholars have noted changes in art as well, that new modes of art and a freedom of artistic expression blossomed across the Middle East North Africa region in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Yet scholars have neglected performance art, which was nearly non-existent as a medium in the Tunisian art scene before the revolution In spring 2011, a group of Tunisians lead by artist Sana Tamzini propelled a white, fiberglass cloud through the narrow, winding streets of the Tunis medina, the old city center. This performance, Horr 1 (Free 1) (2011) was one of the first public art performances in the history of Tunisian art and was inspired by the recent revolution-related political sit-ins known as Kasbah I and II at that very site. Similarly, in a second performance, Sous mon drapeau (Under my flag) (2012), citizens used their bodies to create an oversize, living Tunisian flag in solidarity with a young protester, Khaoula Rachidi. Horr 1 and Sous mon drapeau do not merely memorialize post-revolution moments, they embody the Tunisian revolution by prioritizing citizen-bodies as agents of change, while indicating a new direction for Tunisian contemporary art, that of bodily, participatory works. While outwardly, the works do not seem to make claims about bodies, on another level they do just that, for without the citizen-bodies, the performances do not exist. The citizen-bodies involved in Horr 1 and Sous mon drapeau use participatory body art to reference themes of the Tunisian revolution and make new relationships with one another, illustrating how a performance can encompass more than its singular act. The emergence of public performance art as a medium in contemporary Tunisian art indicates a new relationship of Tunisian bodies to public spaces and embodies the revolution, being arguably the medium with the closest relationship to protest; both protest and performance explicitly involve the body in action.
Discipline
Art/Art History
Geographic Area
Maghreb
Tunisia
Sub Area
Maghreb Studies