Taken across various landscapes of the Tunisian south, the works present a figure shrouded in a white sheet photographed against many rural and desolate backdrops. This series, produced from 2012-2015, is shown in its entirety for the first time.

“I went back to the Tunisian southwest, his silent poverty, its mineral loneliness, its arid and forgotten soils whose foundations were rich with minerals, which have been confiscated and stripped from these oppressed – but not submissive – souls.

I took the road that crosses these dusty lands, an area that is both lifeless and inhabited, where the captive figure moves. This body is moving within this universe as its matrix; it extracts itself with a gesture that breaks its confinement. In its struggle, in its encounters, in its wanderings, this body is a figure of resistance, a figure pushing for freedom and the re-enchantment of a forgotten land.”

Mouna Karray, 2015

Considered one of the most disadvantaged regions in the country, the south of Tunisia has traditionally suffered from a lack of investment and marginalisation. Karray’s works represent a series of loaded narratives exploring the artist’s encounters with both the people and landscape of this region – which provides a home for the country’s neglected, almost forgotten, population. Restrained by the limitations of their socio-economic status, the isolation and alienation experienced by the people in this region are personified within Karray’s restricted, anonymous subject. This figure exists in stark juxtaposition to the unique beauty and vast character of the surrounding landscape.

Born in 1970 in Sfax, Tunisia, Karray studied art and culture in Tunis before moving to Tokyo to complete an MA specialising in photography at the Tokyo Institute of Polytechnics and Arts in 2002. She currently lives and works between Paris and Sfax.