An apparition. An attempt to reveal a hidden content. Hands explore a photograph found in the archive of the artist's father. Touching is seeing. A claim for the shadow to recover memory. Only the shadows cast by the hands reveal what is hidden by the light: a crowd gathering on 20 March 1956, Tunisia's independence day.
Ismaïl Bahri
Visual artist and videographer Ismaïl Bahri (1978, Tunisia) lives and works between Paris and Tunis. He positions himself as an observer; he gropes around, and talks of "shortsightedness" in relation to his work. Bahri then sets up what he calls a "capture device" for these gestures, usually using video, but also photography and sound. It is quite often outside of the frame of the image that meaning emerges, in the perceptible presence of the surrounding world, which is suddenly revealed.