OTHMAN TALEB

Born in 1977, he studied architecture at the School of Architecture and Urbanism of Tunis (ENAU). Othman Taleb is a multidisciplinary artist active in the visual arts scene since 2006. Alongside his creative work, he has also evolved in the fields of architecture and urban design. His practice has allowed him to deepen his art of observation and communication, adding the power of the image to the weight of words, while combining technical skills, rigor, and sensitivity.

Enriched by numerous travels, trainings, and international missions, Othman Taleb developed a unique style, as well as a fluency and spontaneity that enable him to explore mixed techniques in painting and drawing with sensitivity. He develops a new aesthetic nourished by the passage of time and space. The inspiration of his lines often guides figurative works, finding full expression in subjects and themes related to the human being and exploring, through an accumulation of “layers of life,” contemporary issues transposed to past eras.

He often seeks a type of contemporary human architecture through a visual passage across layers of experience, preparing a journey with a set of forms, tones, human stories, different cultures, and living conditions, aiming for a new reading of figurative art while continuously pushing the limits of classical representation.

Othman Taleb has exhibited his work in Tunisia (galleries and biennials) and abroad, including at the Tunis Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (*The Absence of Path*), Beirut Art Fair 2017, artist residency at the Glass Box (Paris), various private galleries, DDessin Drawing Salon 2017/2018 with “La Maison de la Plage,” Off Biennale Dakar (Bind Contemporary, Senegal), Switzerland, Morocco, and more recently in 2019 at the SISLEY Foundation in Paris.

"To truly absorb each detail of the delicately drawn lines on the canvases illustrating the exodus of refugees to Europe, one must approach the painting. The lines are always so lightly drawn in pencil, yet they still manage to provide powerful images that one would normally see only in fragments in the daily news."

His works are part of the permanent collections of the Tunisian government, Attijari Bank, and numerous collectors in Tunisia and abroad (Dubai, Singapore, France, Spain, USA, Benin, etc.). He has been exhibiting since 2007 and works with Hajer Azouz (La Maison de la Plage), a curator and interior designer based in La Marsa.

Othman lives in Tunis and works between Paris and Tunis.


︎ @othmanetaleb