7out yekel 7out

“7out yekel 7out” is a smaller, cramped, and more personal canvas than “Little Sicily”, because it represents my Goulette, my memories, lying between mirrors and memories: my cracks and my wounds. This painting is a reflection on time, centered on the image of fish, the culinary and economic, creative or even recreational centerpiece of La Goulette, its restaurants and its port. It is inspired by an iconic proverb, which has a different meaning for me than the original: “حوت يأكل حوت وقليل الجهد يموت”

With this fabled Tunisian proverb, a seamless picture of the food chain encapsulates the ins and outs of power privilege... Power guarantees many privileges, which make its possessor far from the areas of "targeting". This is why the "strong" lives in relative peace in exchange for an assumed threat from those who hold the same balance. It was said, "A whale eats a whale, and with little effort it dies."

This everlasting proverb may represent the law of the strongest, but for me, it is above all the echo of the cycle of life. The movement of fish, symbolized by the tiles in every corner of the Goulette, between Jneh Khotifa and Wardat al-Shams, reflects the fugacity of life. This representation draws its sources from my childhood between the port, the beach and its fish.

With my grandfather, who constantly used to say it, we often went there, to taste grilled meats or feel the seawater, without thinking that in the distance, on the horizon, there was another... My grandfather joined him on June 18, 2022. Today, all I have left are my tattered and decomposed memories to return to my roots.

To spend a moment with him on the shore of the Goulette, listening in silence, admiring the fishermen or sipping lemonade, the present is no longer enough... You have to look behind you, observe the past, and return to memories, which are represented by the fish going to the left of the painting, a symbol of the past. At the same time, one must move forward, towards the future, which is reflected by the fish going to the right. It is a symbol of the future, of which I will make him proud. Between the two, the ephemeral, the elusive present, is the same as between the two fish that meet face-to-face on the upper middle of the canvas.

So time passes, the past fades away, memories fluctuate, and the future is watching us. Under the abyss of the sea, in my Goulette, lie my memories buried, hidden under the surface of an immaculate port, in the glow of the sunset...