TUNIS.- L’Art Rue association announced that curator Tarek Abou El Fetouh is joining the artistic team of Dream City festival led by Selma and Sofiane Ouissi and Jan Goossens, to curate exhibitions for its two following editions in 2025 and 2027.

Researching the upcoming exhibition led to the idea for the project Suni’a Bisihrika, or Made with Your Magic. The project is planned to unfold in five phases across cities and will be launched in Tunis during Dream City 2025 with an exhibition and a conference, concluding in 2027 with an exhibition and launch of a publication co-edited with Rasha Salti.

The project borrows its Arabic title from a phrase created to facilitate the memorization of the eight ِmain ِArabic musical maqams. Each letter in these two words represents the first letter of a main maqam’s name. These formal musical structures have been used for centuries in a vast region that includes the Arab world and its neighboring geographies, extending to Central Asia.

The names of some maqams refer to specific places in the region, such as the village of Al-Bayati in Iraq, the Kurdish city of Nahawand, or the historical Hijaz region in the Arabian Peninsula. Others relate to ethnic groups, such as the maqam Kurd, referencing the Kurdish people, or Ajam, which means non-Arab. Some refer to specific characteristics or emotional states, such as maqam Sikah, the Persian term for ‘third-string,’ or that singular, melancholy maqam called Saba - a word of Syriac origin - which was also termed ‘the weeping of men’ in the Abbasid period.

Beyond their function as aesthetic structures, maqams are charged with historical, cultural, social, and political dynamics. Reflecting on their names and origins reveals that they do not conform to preconceived notions of national and linguistic identity. They carry a rich artistic and cultural diversity and have, over the course of history, survived shifting political conditions marked by cycles of exclusion, persecution, war, and the collapse of empires.

The exhibition draws inspiration from the signs and connotations carried by these maqams beyond the aesthetics of sound, through a visual and intellectual approach that looks at the present moment in the regions from which they emerged. It looks at the crises of the ethnic groups that contributed to the formation of these maqams, and at geopolitical shifts experienced in Arab countries over the past fifteen years, which have affected the cultural sector as well, leading to the exodus of numerous artists and intellectuals into forced or voluntary exile.

Participating artists include Walid Raad, Iman Issa, Ala Younis, Noor Abuarafeh, and Ayman Zedani among others.

Dream City is an international multidisciplinary art festival organized by L’Art Rue, an association founded in 2006 by dancers and choreographers Selma and Sofiane Ouissi, who were later joined by Jan Goossens. L’Art Rue regularly implements six cross-disciplinary programs, fostering continuous experimentation that reinvents the present and envisions new horizons for our society. One of the programs is Dream City, which every two years takes over the medina to present newly produced art works in informal spaces, in its cafés, streets, abandoned buildings, and public squares.

The works are developed through extended processes of artistic research and production. Participating artists are supported over extended periods—ranging from one to four years—allowing them the time and space to immerse themselves in the city’s social and political realities. They are invited to experiment with context-specific practices, engaging directly with the urban landscape and its residents to produce works that respond to the current moment, its issues and challenges.

Tarek Abou El Fetouh established visual and performance art initiatives across the Arab world, including the Meeting Points Contemporary Art Festival, which took place in different Arab cities. He has curated numerous exhibitions in the UAE, the region, and beyond, including the National Pavilion of the United Arab Emirates at the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale (2024); the Public Art Program for Expo 2020 in Dubai; Rituals of Signs and Metamorphoses (2018) and Captive of Love (2017) at Red Brick Art Museum, Beijing; The Time Is Out of Joint at the Sharjah Art Foundation and the Asia Culture Center, Gwangju (2016); Lest the Two Seas Meet at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2015); and the exhibition of Home Works 6 in Beirut (2013). Abou El Fetouh was Senior Curator and Director of the Performance Department at the Sharjah Art Foundation between 2021 and 2024.