NAJAH ZARBOUT

Najah Zarbout is a Tunisian artist. After studying at the Institut Supérieur des Arts et Métiers in Sfax, she continued her education at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, where she completed a PhD in Arts and Art Sciences.

 

Working across drawing, video and installation, she has developed a multidisciplinary practice that probes the tensions of the contemporary world. Her work engages with current affairs, social structures and the human condition, addressing themes of submission, disobedience and resilience. Through these concerns, she invites reflection on the ways they manifest within our lived environment, with a particular attentiveness to ecological questions.

 

Her approach is grounded in the belief that artists create not only from an individual subjectivity, but also from a collective and social one. The realities she absorbs become the very material of her thought. In recent years, this position has found a tangible expression in a body of work centred on acts of cutting — from embossing and folding to incision and laceration. Through compositions that interweave light, line and cut, she enters into a dialogue with paper and, through it, with the layered strata of memory. Her practice is underpinned by an ongoing reflection on the palimpsests of cultural identity, seeking to discern and reveal what is original from that which has been altered or overlaid.

 

In 2018, Zarbout represented Tunisia at the Dakar Biennale in Senegal. Alongside numerous solo and group exhibitions, her work has been presented at international art fairs and exhibited widely in Tunisia and abroad, including in South Africa, France, Switzerland, Qatar and Belgium. In 2008, she was awarded the Grand Prix in Visual Arts at the ‘Ici et demain’ festival in France.