"The Hirafen exhibition offers an unprecedented dialogue between contemporary art and Tunisian textile crafts. Nineteen multidisciplinary artists have been invited to draw on the crafts of thread and fiber to create a specific work as part of a research and production residency in Tunisia. Through their respective artistic practices, these artists of different origins and generations have each developed a singular approach, delving into the multiple dimensions of an all-too-frequently overlooked intangible heritage whose non-linear history is marked by evolution, influences and ruptures. From the north to the south of Tunisia, in towns and countryside, in the public space of medinas and in the intimacy of homes, women and men have always woven, embroidered and braided thread and fiber from the landscape that surrounds them. Their age-old gestures have given rise to objects whose rich diversity of materials, colors and motifs are the result of a variety of skills and techniques that have been perpetuated over time. Exploring traditional craftsmanship offers visual artists a new terrain for experimentation, but also a chance to reconnect with making, with gesture, with the hand and, more broadly, with nature and history. It's also an opportunity for artists and craftspeople to engage in dialogue, and to raise the question of how we can work together to make things. Knowledge continues to be passed on and gestures repeated, feeding a collective memory that is still very much alive, as evidenced by the Hirafen exhibition, whose plurality of voices simply prolongs the narrative".
Hirafen is the 5th edition of Talan l'Expo and marks the 10th anniversary of its creation."
