On Boujaafar beach, Séverin Guelpa installs columns assembled piece by piece from various materials: concrete, earth, wood, stainless steel, rubble, marble and stone… These materials, unearthed from different places and sites in Sousse, tell the story of Sousse through its land, its agricultural land, its building sites, the traces of its disused hotels and industrial wastelands, its architectural diversity between yesterday and today… Core drilled, chiselled and cast, the pieces that make up these columns, made of sedimented strata, acquire a de facto archaeological aspect. These columns stand like a sequencing of the city’s genome, preserving its past, displaying its present and foreshadowing its future… in a word, its culture. This is the artist’s conception of the culture of the city, of any city for that matter, made up of components that are never homogeneous.
Wissem El Abed
