Léa Djeziri
Léa Djeziri studied at École supérieure d'Art de Lorraine and then in Strasbourg. She draws, inks, scratches, presses, cuts and photographs. Léa has visited Tunis several times, the last time was in March 2020 when we had the joy of having her in confinement within Dar Meso. We cooked, played and created together. We then savored our newfound freedom (end of confinment) by helping her paint her fresco on the walls of "Le 42" exhibition venue of Central Tunis.
Yassine Rachidi
My name is Yassine, I am both a story teller and writer, and I do that through different mediums. My research explores the Stranger as a vector of the imagination and digs into the transversality that exists between contemporary art and literature.
I was welcomed at Dar Meso by Youssef and Florence when I was working on my exhibition (Lost in Transition) which explored irregular migration and the place held by the imagination in this pivotal moment that is the harrga.
Lost in transition explores the rare physical traces left from an invisible phenomenon; irregular migration.
During those moments of crossing, irregular migrants are burning maritime borders, steps, but also their identity, leaving behind ashes of a fleeting presence.
Among the remaining traces of those fires happening in the Mediterranean, remains clothes, shoes and letters thrown away in the sea that Momo, a sea wanderer, collects.
Holding the world record for some 50 000 plastic bottles collected out of the sea, Momo found 40 of them containing messages. Out of them, he wrote poems and cross-linked
the words to the migrant belongings he found drifting.
The project explores the practice of this man who responds to tragedy with imagination and poetry.
The installations investigates the stories growing in Momo’s garden.
An ode to the sea and to all of those who have thrown a letter in it.
https://www.instagram.com/santiago.munez1/
Rafik Rezine - Daynassour
Bill Walker
Bill Walker was raised in Macon, Georgia and attended the University of Georgia, where he earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Accounting. He traded U.S. Treasury Bonds at the Chicago Board of Trade for 10 years. He then moved to London where he traded German Bonds for Nomura International at the London International Futures Exchange for four years.
Upon leaving the trading business, Bill took a radical turn. He served for a year as a volunteer in a welfare reform program in South Texas. He then taught English as a second language in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Peru.
He came to hiking late in life, but has tried to make up for it. In 2005 he thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail. In 2006, he hiked the Long Trail. In 2009, he hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. In 2010, 2011, and 2012 he hiked the wildly popular spiritual pilgrimage El Camino de Santiago , which crosses the northern arc of Spain. In 2013 he completed the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, which reaches 17,768 feet and is the most popular footpath in Asia.
This new lifestyle brought to light a new talent and a new passion, writing. His books are mainly about his adventures outdoors starting with Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail in 2008 which was a best seller.
He has written the outdoor narratives, Skywalker–Close Encounters on the Appalachian Trail(2008), Skywalker–Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail(2010), The Best Way–El Camino de Santiago (2012),Getting High–The Annapurna Circuit in Nepal(2013), and Tall Tales–The Great Talisman of Height (2014).
Alessandra Di Consoli
Born in Chile on 21/06/1982, lives and works in Milan, after the experimental art high school, she graduated from the European Institute of Design in 2004 in ARTIVISIVE, Photography while undergoing theater courses, her last training was in 2018 at the Institute of Psychocorporeal Phototherapy in Bologna. Alessandra started working as a freelance in 2005 both as a photographer and as an artist, creating installations and places to dream with the desire to create more and more an interaction between art and society. As a photographer, she started collaborating with the East Milan Library System, and was for years assistant photographer in the SUPERSTUDIO13 studios for fashion and advertising, then at SUPERSTUDIOPIù in Milan as a photographer.
October 2017 Aleja won a tender from the City Hall 3 in Milan for the creation of a multimedia photographic project "A window on the nettle" which took place in the streets of the Ortica neighborhood where voices and images meet.
October 2018 she was commissioned a series of 12 portraits of which will remain for 9 months installed in Piazza Vetra for the project Faciamo Piazza thanks to the design studio IlPrisma and Axa Assicurazioni
Aly Keita
Born in Abidjan in 1969, is a balafonist focused on the traditional African repertoire, with western jazz, soft pop and African rhythms.
Coming from a family of musicians, Aly Keita grew up surrounded by traditional instruments such as the djembe and the kora. But his favorite instrument would become the balafon that he built very young with his own hands and which he played relentlessly to shine today alongside artists such: Omar Sosa, Rhoda Scott, ArtoTuncboyacyan, Paolo Fresu, Paco Séry, TrilokGurtu, Jan Garbarek, Hans Lüdemann or the late Joe Zawinul ...
Aly Keita participates in many festivals in Europe and the rest of the world. In 1999, at the initiative of the “Y'a pas son deux” association, initiator of the “Ingénieuse Afrique” festival in Tarascon-sur-Ariège, woods and calabashes from Africa were imported so that Aly Keita could build the largest balafon of the world: he himself builds his own instruments. He recorded two albums under his own name (Akwaba Inisene (translated as Welcome to Africa) and Farafinko), the first album pays tribute both to the country where he grew up, Cote d’Ivoire, and to his country of origin , Mali.
Aly Keita, very present on the German scene, gives concerts with Trio Ivoire or solo, and takes part in various international projects. In 2009 with his group Aly Keita & The Magic Balafon Berliner Band he won the first prize of the Creole - Global Music Contest (de) in Germany.
In 2009 with Gert Kilian and Philippe Nasse, Aly Keita carried out an initiation method for the pentatonic balafon, Le Balafon with Aly Keita & Gert Kilian.
He plays among others with the group Kâla Ethno Groove of Gert Kilian, and the multi-cultural group Jokko. In 2016 he played with Omar Sosa in the band Tribute to Mahmoud Guinea. He performed in 2017 alongside Rachid Taha as part of the "Chaâbi Weekend" at the initiative of the Arab World Institute, in 2018 with Guo Gan.
Amir Elsaffar
Composer, trumpeter, santurplayer, and vocalist Amir ElSaffar has been described as “uniquelypoised to reconcile jazz and Arabic music,” (the Wire) and “one of the mostpromising figures in jazz today” (Chicago Tribune). A recipient of the Doris Duke PerformingArtistAward and a 2018 US ArtistFellow, ElSaffaris an expert trumpeterwith a classical background, conversant not only in the language of contemporary jazz, but has created techniques to playmicrotones and ornamentsidiomatic to Arabic music that are not typicallyheard on the trumpet. Additionally, heis a purveyor of the centuries old, nowendangered, Iraqi maqam tradition, whichheperformsactively as a vocalist and santurplayer. As a composer, ElSaffar has used the subtlemicrotonesfound in Iraqi maqam music to create an innovativeapproach to harmony and melody, and has received commissions to compose for large and small jazz ensembles, traditional Middle Eastern ensembles, chamber orchestras, string quartets, and contemporary music ensembles, as well as dance troupes.
Described as “an imaginative bandleader, expanding the vocabulary of the trumpet and at the same time the modern jazz ensemble,” (All About Jazz), ElSaffaris an important voice in an age of cross-cultural music making. ElSaffar has received commissions from the MAP Fund, ArabFund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), Newport Jazz Festival, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chamber Music America, Jazz Institute of Chicago, and is composer-in-residence at the Royaumont Foundation in France in 2017-2019.
Massao Mascaro
French photographer (Lille 1990) who lives and works in Brussels. Massao’s work is always looking for a delicate balance between autobiography, topography and politics. His work often revolves around territory. In Ramo it was his ancestor’s Calabria, in Jardin the mythical space of the garden, found in the streets and parks of Madrid. In his new project, Massao is working on around the Mediterranean coasts, cradle of many civilisations, using the journey of Ulysses as a loose guideline. The scope of his work is profoundly political, as it is rooted in the need to explore how humans relate to the spaces (both cultural and geographical) they inhabit.
Wael Allouch
Artist and Designer Wael el Allouche (TN/NL) graduated from the design department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. He is interested in the way abstractions, such as Data and Algorithms, shape reality and vice versa. By digitizing phenomena and objects from the world around him he tries to understand them, before returning them to reality as reconstructions.