Abdesslem Ayed

Abdesslem Ayed, born in 1979, is a Tunisian artist practicing among others sculpture, embroidery and weaving. Having obtained his master’s degree in Fine Arts, specializing in sculpture in 2004, he has subsequently held several positions in the cultural world. He has been teaching at the Institut Supérieur des Beaux-arts of Tunis between 2009 and 2017, but also curator-restorer of heritage from 2011 at the Musée National du Bardo. Since the beginning of his career, he has had the opportunity to exhibit his work on numerous occasions. He is currently represented by the Tunisian gallery Yosr Ben Ammar.

The practice of weaving and embroidery finds its sources in an ancient cultural soil and in a personal genealogy. Through the gestures that animate them, these techniques restore a poetic and memorial charge that takes its measure of the dense and precious fabric that a local heritage of textile arts and fiber arts transmits to us. By making these gestures the heart that inhabits and animates his practice, Abdesslem Ayed works to reconnect with a history (personal, cultural) and to explore its continuities and its possible deployments in the here and now. The weaving and embroidery that he makes are the diary of what links him to the world. Where journal writing uses ink and words, his practice seeks to materially invite the fabric of the world, to draw the threads of a chain from our relationship to this world, to spin the materials that make it.