Biography

Challenging disciplinary distinctions, Malek Gnaoui works with printmaking and ceramics alongside installation and video to provide performative qualities to his work. Exploring traditional mediums through experimental processes with commodified, ubiquitous materials, Gnaoui questions the societal conditions that result in, or necessitate, the sacrifice of one’s sense of humanity. Ala Eddine Slim is a filmmaker and producer who utilises the absurdity of contemporary events as material for the creation of fictional realities. Capturing notions of marginality and vagrancy, and practices of territorialisation, Slim’s work expresses the transformative power of fiction as a method for analysing lived experience.

Gnaoui and Slim first collaborated on the installation عن ... [about] at Festival Dream City, Tunis (2022). Previously, they worked on creative projects separately.

Among Gnaoui’s solo exhibitions are Essaïda-Carthage: Between the Past and the Future, Selma Feriani Gallery, Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia (2020); Fabrica 0464, Selma Feriani Gallery, Sidi Bou Said (2015); Abattoir, Selma Feriani Gallery, London (2014); and Abattoir, Talmart, Paris (2008). His work has been presented in the group exhibitions and festivals arm & reich, Dom Museum, Vienna (2021); Banal Complexities, philomena+, Vienna (2021); Des Airs, La Boîte, Tunis (2021); JAOU Tunis (2019); Shubbak Festival, London (2019); Festival Dream City, Tunis (2015, 2019); and Festival Masnaa, Casablanca (2016).

His work can be found in the collections of Dom Museum, Vienna; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; British Museum, London; Kamel Lazaar Foundation, Tunis; and Musée d’Art Contemporain Africain Al Maaden (MACAAL), Marrakech, among others.

He has also participated in residencies at philomena+; Cité internationale des arts, Paris; Centre des Arts Vivants, Radès, Tunisia; and Centre national de ceramique d’art Sidi Kacem Jlizi, Tunis.

Among Slim’s films and videos screened at museums and festivals are Tlamess, Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes Film Festival (2019); The Last of Us, Venice Film Festival (2016); and Diary of an Important Man and Diary of an Important Woman, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2012). Earlier films include Babylon (2012), The Stadium (2010), En compagnie d’Hamlet (2009), Une nuit parmi les autres (2008) and L’Automne (2007). Slim’s films have also been shown at MoMA, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tabakalera, San Sebastián, Spain; and Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, France. He is the co-founder of Exit Productions (2005).

The Last of Us has won a number of awards, including the Lion of the Future, Luigi De Laurentiis Prize for Best First Film, and the Mario Serandrei Prize for Best Technical Contribution to International Critics’ Week, both at the Venice Film Festival (2016), and the Tanit d’Or, Carthage Film Festival (2016). He also received the Grand Prix de la Compétition Internationale, FID Marseille (2012), for Babylon.

Gnaoui graduated from the L’Ecole d’Art et de Décoration, Tunis, and trained at the Centre national de ceramique d’art Sidi Kacem Jlizi, Tunis. Slim graduated from the Institut supérieur des arts multimédia de La Manouba (ISAMM), Tunisia, in audiovisual technologies.

Gnaoui was born in 1983 in Gabes, Tunisia, and Slim was born in 1982 in Sousse, Tunisia. Both artists currently live and work in Tunis.

SAF participation:
Sharjah Biennial 15 (2023)

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