2017-2018

The Barker

"« L'Aboyeur » is an exhibition and a concept, around a character that is both fictional and real. This figure emerged from the observation of the mass media that the artist made after the revolution and in the emerging Tunisian democracy. There were, in the various television and radio broadcasted debates, something like chaos and dissonance. The voices raised not together, but over or against others, provoking an inaudible cacophony, ultimately more painful than constructive. The artist replies to this form of contestation, liberating and saving, but also savage and sometimes without any rigorous content, carried by passions sometimes more than by reflection, by the creation of this hybrid and paradoxical character. He takes shape as a kind of archetype of the "professional protester", of the one who speaks in an inappropriate way and abuses the word, of the one who takes advantage of free expression to talk nonsense, as long as he is heard. But in fact, this character exists in all the democracies of the world, it is even one of its dangers. Confiscating and diverting the principle of freedom of expression, he sometimes manages to cover with his nonsense the more intelligent voices. 

It is therefore to a subtle thought about the meaning of freedom of democratic expression that Faten Rouissi invites us, pointing out the need of a kind of learning temperance, which, we know it, is one of the cardinal virtues, both ethically and politically. The muzzle, which immediately evokes the dog's barking, symbolizes this need for measure and moderation, to achieve a peaceful public life." 

Marie Deparis-Yafil

Art Critic, Curator- L'Aboyeur in El Jem - July 2017