Galerie Claude Lemand

RIDHA ZILI (Tunisa, 1943-2011),
Tunisia of Old.

30 Photographs.
Donation Claude & France Lemand, 2018.
Institut du monde arabe, Paris.

Hatem Bourial, The Enchanting World of our Memories.
Preface to the book RIDHA ZILI, Tunisia. Portraits and Crafts from long ago, Zili éditions, Tunis, 2018.

« Through the souks and the coun­tryside, recre­ating a time long past in the med­inas, this pho­tog­ra­pher brings our recent past back to life, cap­turing in tender moments the sub­lime work of arti­sans and more than any­thing else, cap­turing the inde­scrib­able tra­di­tions that weave together the threads of our daily life. In the olive groves, the oases or the steppes, the people con­tinue their work, day in and day out. Barefoot shep­herds in the shade of hun­dred year old trees and women wrestling with the ances­tral break emerge res­o­lute, as if they were living in another time.

A con­flu­ence of esthetics and doc­u­men­tary, Zili explores the cap­ti­vating place of our nos­talgia. The geniuses with clay cre­ating shapes from their imag­i­na­tion; the weavers cre­ating their works with the sim­plicity of their mate­rials and an explo­sion of colors; car­pen­ters and sieve makers keep the tra­di­tions alive. The arti­sans’ anthem rever­ber­ates from the lively souks and the calm med­inas. In the labyrinth of alley­ways we also find the tra­di­tional small mer­chants from another era: the milkman on his bicycle going door to door, those selling warm bread that’s always ready, water bearers and spice sellers, trash col­lec­tors and hard­ware dealers….

Zili is able to bring us back to the inti­mate chaos of our med­inas with a great deal of ten­der­ness. From Monastir to Cap Bon, from Sfax to Tunis, from Djerba to the Sahel, he cap­tures the dozens of frag­ments of eter­nity. »