What happened before you became my grandmother? Before I entered your life and you became part of mine?
The story begins almost a century ago on the other side of the Mediterranean, but could take place today. Thanks to the traces left, photographs, memories lived or told, places inhabited or rediscovered, perfumes and all what administrative archives can reveal, Katel Delia, retells the simple life of one woman among so many others, Marie Angèle, a foreigner in the country where she was born, where she grew up, where she built her family. In this colonial Tunisia, nationalities, religions and cultures coexisted, mixed and respected each other. Some women worked but without recognition. They fought for rights, and got only some. A new Tunisia was being built and foreigners were being chased out. You have to leave everything, but where do you go?
Katel Delia looks for how, in these successive exiles, Marie Angèle rebuilt her daily life. How could her small gestures, her habits, her rituals, allow her to stay upright, to move forward. Food seems to be the strongest link, the strongest attachment to places, people, and anecdotes. Katel, like Marie Angèle and like many ordinary women, cultivates memories as precious goods.
Marie Angèle (2022)
family photographs, contemporary photographs, archival documents, vintage frames
Exhibit the first time at The Ordinary Lives Of Women at Spazju Kreattiv
family photographs, contemporary photographs, archival documents, vintage frames
Exhibit the first time at The Ordinary Lives Of Women at Spazju Kreattiv