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Yesmine Ben Khelil - Crois-tu que le taureau soit sur tes cornes?, 2024 - Spazio Ferdinand Stuflesser, Pontives

Yesmine Ben Khelil, Crois-tu que le taureau soit sur tes cornes?, 2024. Acrylic on Cardboard. Three Panels. Variable Dimensions. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo

Yesmine Ben Khelil tackles Tunisia’s colonial past through drawings, collages and diagrams, focusing in particular on the botanical plates of scientific texts and how these apparently neutral tools were used to construct a univocal narrative, at the service of colonial powers. Reversing the relationship between knowledge and representation, the artist constructs constellations of images and artefacts that tell an alternative story to the official one.

On the occasion of Biennale Gherdëina 9, the artist painted three cut-out cardboard panels, inspired by a Tunisian saying, “Do you think you can carry the Earth on your horns?” The expression is used to indicate vanity, and is rooted in an ancient popular belief that imagines the Earth carried on a bull’s horns. The story is linked to the toponymy of the mountain that the artist sees from her window every day, the Djebel Boukornine, ‘the mountain with two horns’: a massif with two peaks overlooking the Gulf of Tunis. Called Baal Qarnaïm by the Punics, i.e. the ‘two-horned god’, it was home to an ancient sanctuary dedicated to the deity – of which the bull is the attribute and one of the sacrificial victims – as confirmed in 1891 by the studies of the French archaeologist Jules Toutain, whose findings may be seen in the Louvre in Paris. “Through the tale of a god who is reincarnated in a mountain with two horns, of men who have sacrificed bulls on the summit over the centuries, and of the marble artefacts carefully preserved in a European museum, I would like to convey the rebirth of a world in which the non-human and its uncertainty are celebrated, finding a way for a world of myth and legend to exist within the one where we live, which places human beings at the centre and considers everything around them to be at their disposal.” (M.P.)

YESMINE BEN KHELIL

Yesmine Ben Khelil (1986, Tunis, Tunisia) focuses on the representations that saturate the world, and narrates fragmented stories often revolving around manipulated reality or invisible forces. Solo exhibitions include La Boîte, B7L9 Art station, and Selma Feriani Gallery, Tunis; and Galerie Maia Muller, Paris. She also exhibited at Kunsthalle Wien; Musée des beaux-arts de Rouen, the MUCEM, Rouen and Marseille; and Mediterranea 19 Young artists biennale. Her work is part of the following collections: La Boîte, centre d’art contemporain, Tunis, Artothèque de la ville de Strasbourg; and Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunis. She was resident at B7L9 station d’art contemporain, Tunis; Philomena + art and architecture platform, Vienna; and L’escalier B, Bordeaux.

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Yesmine Ben Khelil - Crois-tu que le taureau soit sur tes cornes?, 2024 - Spazio Ferdinand Stuflesser, Pontives

Yesmine Ben Khelil, Crois-tu que le taureau soit sur tes cornes?, 2024. Acrylic on Cardboard. Three Panels. Variable Dimensions. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo by Tiberio Sorvillo

Yesmine Ben Khelil tackles Tunisia’s colonial past through drawings, collages and diagrams, focusing in particular on the botanical plates of scientific texts and how these apparently neutral tools were used to construct a univocal narrative, at the service of colonial powers. Reversing the relationship between knowledge and representation, the artist constructs constellations of images and artefacts that tell an alternative story to the official one.

On the occasion of Biennale Gherdëina 9, the artist painted three cut-out cardboard panels, inspired by a Tunisian saying, “Do you think you can carry the Earth on your horns?” The expression is used to indicate vanity, and is rooted in an ancient popular belief that imagines the Earth carried on a bull’s horns. The story is linked to the toponymy of the mountain that the artist sees from her window every day, the Djebel Boukornine, ‘the mountain with two horns’: a massif with two peaks overlooking the Gulf of Tunis. Called Baal Qarnaïm by the Punics, i.e. the ‘two-horned god’, it was home to an ancient sanctuary dedicated to the deity – of which the bull is the attribute and one of the sacrificial victims – as confirmed in 1891 by the studies of the French archaeologist Jules Toutain, whose findings may be seen in the Louvre in Paris. “Through the tale of a god who is reincarnated in a mountain with two horns, of men who have sacrificed bulls on the summit over the centuries, and of the marble artefacts carefully preserved in a European museum, I would like to convey the rebirth of a world in which the non-human and its uncertainty are celebrated, finding a way for a world of myth and legend to exist within the one where we live, which places human beings at the centre and considers everything around them to be at their disposal.” (M.P.)

YESMINE BEN KHELIL

Yesmine Ben Khelil (1986, Tunis, Tunisia) focuses on the representations that saturate the world, and narrates fragmented stories often revolving around manipulated reality or invisible forces. Solo exhibitions include La Boîte, B7L9 Art station, and Selma Feriani Gallery, Tunis; and Galerie Maia Muller, Paris. She also exhibited at Kunsthalle Wien; Musée des beaux-arts de Rouen, the MUCEM, Rouen and Marseille; and Mediterranea 19 Young artists biennale. Her work is part of the following collections: La Boîte, centre d’art contemporain, Tunis, Artothèque de la ville de Strasbourg; and Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunis. She was resident at B7L9 station d’art contemporain, Tunis; Philomena + art and architecture platform, Vienna; and L’escalier B, Bordeaux.