HELA LAMINE (b.1984)

Hela Lamine, born in Tunis in 1984, lives and works in Tunis. She graduated from the Institut des Beaux-Arts de Tunis and the Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. She currently teaches at the Institut supérieur des beaux-arts de Sousse.

Due to her training as an engraver, drawing, which traditionally constitutes the very foundation of a print, occupies a very important place in her work. Never fully acquired, but constantly questioned, Hela Lamine is interested in its technical and historical evolution, and above all wonders about the place it can occupy "in the age of its technical reproducibility". She thus questions the notion of "aura", but also that of the "sacred", the confrontation of the "unique" with the "multiple", the "original" and the "reproducible", the "consumable", up to a form of linear bulimia which takes, over time, the form of superimposable layers similar to those of sedimentary strata.

For her solo exhibition entitled "The Unsecret life of Samantha. C", Hela Lamine decided to conduct a unique year-and-a-half-long experiment, during which she secretly followed the posts of a certain Samantha, chosen at random on the social network Facebook, and worked on all the digital data to which she had legal access. What interests her the most are the publicly visible photographs of Samantha, her friends, and her family. In 2015, Hela Lamine exhibited over 100 graphic works including paintings, drawings, and mixed techniques, all dealing with the "non-secret" life of Samantha.C.

Food occupies a particular place in her research since 2010. Originally a thesis subject, it gradually transformed into an annual meeting with the viewer where she questions food practices described as "taboo", thus imagining "cannibal feasts" or "an invitation to an anthropophagic halal gluttony", "politicians of the body" as appetizers, main courses to resist, and desserts where one could taste the ears of a corrupt judge...


︎ @hela.lamine
︎ helalamine.com