what comes after the ashes
2026 - 2028 | Tunisia - Netherlands
artistic research in collaboration with Aymen Amami on sound design, Youssef Baklouti on storytelling and tunisian mythologies research, and in dialogue with activists and residents of Gabès
https://whatcomesaftertheashes.cargo.site
20.11.2026 - 30.12.2026
Photo exhibition
1.10.2026 - 11.10.2026
A/V installation
I stretched a goat skin across the walls
the way to make a drum or a gembri in Tunisia.
The skin was given to me by an instrument maker.
His ritual gembri sounds vibrate through it.
On the skin, I projected a collage of footage filmed during a sarha سرحة, a
crossing,
over a phosphogypsum stack.
Phosphogypsum is what remains when phosphate is turned into fertilizer
Heavy metals. Rare earth elements. Radioactive material.
Part of it is dumped into the sea.
The rest is piled into low, uneven hills.
The ground looks calcined.
The surface is pale, dry and compact.
It is exposed to wind and erosion.
It is stable underfoot.
I played sounds recorded in Gabès, around the Groupe Chimique Tunisien,
where the extracted phosphate is transformed into fertilizer.
And a conversation in Tunisian, co-written with a storyteller from the region
about the djinns and dragons the miners fear underground.
On the floor, NPK fertilizer, bought in the Netherlands.
The phosphate in it was mined, in part, in Tunisia.
It is stable underfoot.
Photos by Rym Hayouni and Pauluz