Twensa | DABRO

21 May 2016 – 25 June 2016 | Le 32Bis

Once upon a time, there was drawing. It was somewhere just before speech, when humankind first became human and became aware of it. Perhaps it was a way to deny death, to embrace the illusory—yet necessary—dream of eternity: a way to rise above the vulgar condition of *sapiens-sapiens* and its finitude. Drawing—and portraiture in particular—is just that: a solemn affirmation to the universe by which the time of humans becomes infinite. Faces, traits, joys, bodies, tears, hunting scenes, festivities, wars, victories… humanity would depict them all, sometimes even writing in Egypt with drawings. Every child created by God would also say their first syllables on walls, on sand, or on scraps of paper. More than a noun, drawing *is* the ultimate human verb: primitive and primordial. For existence there may be something else—perhaps painting. For essence, however, it is drawing.

Mehdi, aka DaBro, aka Weld Houmti, is one of those children. I met him when we were teenagers in Sousse, then later at Lycée Bourguiba in Tunis, where I followed a “normal” path while he joined a newly created track for artistically gifted students.

In every group of teenagers, there is always someone with extraordinary gifts. For us, it was him, Mehdi. Even then, it was easy to see his wild, primal talent, and his hands sketching portraits of his friends, grotesque caricatures, or—sometimes, to the delight of lost adolescents—erotic scenes of paradisiacal realism.

Later, Mehdi continued in the arts, in Tunis and Paris. He encountered universality, complexity, movements, theory, and art history. Yet none of this compromised him. Mehdi grew, but remained the same child—still drawing portraits, obstinately, despite the omnipresence of photography and digital technology, in this strange era where billions suddenly became portraitists.

Against all odds, Mehdi persists and signs. In 2016, he returned to Tunis with this eclectic exhibition where his charcoal speaks freely—telling us through portraits of radiant smiles, proud tears, weathered wrinkles, and piercing gazes. The models here are not arbitrary. They have a real history, rooted in the 19th century, when an apprentice-orientalist might have sketched local “indigenous” people for colonial studies or postcards. Their images were meant to be faceless, nameless, stripped of history.

Mehdi does the opposite: through the intensity of their eyes, he restores life, humanity, and dignity to these subjects. Beyond classification, beyond post-colonial critique, his portraits are encounters with the human condition—timeless and intimate. In their gazes, we recognize something of ourselves.

In the end, perhaps art is just this: an intimate impression. Mehdi’s stubborn fidelity to drawing—despite colors appearing here and there—is a declaration that drawing, the primal art, remains ultimate. It was once the beginning; it will always endure.

– Heithem Ganouni

ARTIST: DaBro

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