Full Biography

 

Born in Tunis on 20 July, the youngest of five siblings. Mahdaoui grows up in an artistic environment in the popular Bab Souika neighbourhood. His father is a lawyer’s clerk, his mother embroiders calligraphical works on silk, and his uncle works in the silk textile industry.

 

Moves with his family to the coastal town of La Marsa, near Tunis.

 

Attends a Koranic school and later enters primary school in La Marsa.

Begins to draw and paint early on.

 

The early death of his mother, when he is seventeen, is a strong personal and existential shock for him.

 

Among tens of thousands of Tunisians, welcomes the independentist and future president Habib Bourghiba on his triumphal return from exile, in La Goulette on 1 June, few months before Tunisia’s independence from France.

 

Works as an accountant at the Tunis Central Post Office until 1961.

 

Attends history of art and painting courses at the École Libre de Carthage of the “White Fathers” Catholic Missionaries.

Encouraged by his father, travels for the first time to Paris where, for a month, he discovers its cultural and literary life.

 

 

Discovers contemporary international art (Italian in particular) through the exhibitions organized by professor Riccardo Averini, director of the Dante Alighieri Italian Cultural Centre in Tunis.

Second trip to Europe: visits France and Italy.

 

Starts working on the series of Collages and photomontages that will last for several years and will rarely be shown.

 

The death of his father is a turning point for Mahdaoui and incites him to travel back to Europe.

 

 

 

Settles in Rome and attends the courses of the Accademia di Sant’Andrea (painting techniques, theory and philosophy of art).

 

Joins the private courses of professor Zoe Elena Giotta Frunza – Romanian artist and former pupil of Constantin Brancusi – held at her studio in Rome.

 

Meets Padre Di Meglio, attaché of the Vatican, who advises him to follow the practical teachings of the various graphic art techniques of the Middle East and Asia.

 

Begins the series Concrétions – Abstraction Lyrique, lacquered oil on large canvases.

Co-founder in Rome of the first “Collective of Arab painters residing in Italy”.

 

Co-founder of the Groupe des Cinq in Tunis with Néjib Belkhodja, Naceur Ben Cheikh, Juliette Garmadi and Fabio Roccheggiani.

 

Participates in the meetings of the Tunisian writers, poets, visual artists and theatre directors: Taoufik Baccar, Salah Garmadi, Samir Ayadi, Chedli Zoukkar, Ezzedine Madani, Mohamed Aziza, Lotfi Larnaout, Raouf Khenissi, Mohamed Tounsi, Mahmoud Shili, Fredj Chouchane, Moncef Badday, and Néjib Belkhodja.

 

Meets the Italian/Argentinian artist Lucio Fontana who invites him to collaborate with a group of Italian visual and theatre artists at the Galleria Numero in Milan, through its director Fiamma Vigo.

 

Travels to Trieste, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Turkey before spending three months in Moscow.

Graduates from the Accademia di Sant’Andrea (awarded the Silver Cup).

 

 

 

 

Begins a two-year studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris on a scholarship awarded by the Tunisian Ministry of Culture.

 

Enrolls as an external candidate at the École du Louvre, department of Oriental Antiquities.

 

Travels to Italy several times and meets the French writer and art critic Michel Tapié de Céleyran, who introduces him to “Informel”, the new tendency of contemporary art, at the Centro Internazionale di Ricerche Estetiche in Turin.

 

Meets Chantal Mabboux, whom he marries in 1970.

 

Starts working at the Paris branch of the Tunisian UTB (Union Tunisienne de Banques).

 

During the show Espaces abstraits 1 – de l’intuition à la formalisation (55 painters from 15 countries), curated by Renzo Cortina and Michel Tapié at the Galleria Cortina in Milan, Mahdaoui meets several international artists (among which Japanese and Iranians) who make him question his own artistic approach and research. They inspire him to develop the graphic gesture that will personalize his work through the sign and the letter. Among them: Lucio Fontana, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Giò Minola, Carla Acardi, Angelo Bozzola, Sam Francis, Paul Jenkins, Jackson Pollock, Claire Falkenstein, Antoni Tàpies, R. Ortega, Isidore Isou, Hinsho Domoto, Takashi Suzuki, Toshimitsu Imai, Atsuko Tanaka, Kzuo Shiraga, Shigeru Onishi, Sofu Teshigahara; Hossein Zenderoudi, and Mohammad Ehsai.

 

 

His son Chedli is born.

He is invited by Michel Tapié to participate in the international exhibition Espaces abstraits II at the Galleria Cortina in Milan, featuring the Japanese masters Imai, Onishi and Insho as well as the Iranian artists Zenderoudi, Ehsai, Moafi, Pilaram and Tabrizi, among others.

 

Spends over a month in Morocco and through Pauline de Mazière, founder of the Galerie l’Atelier (a very lively artistic and cultural hub in Rabat), meets several Moroccan artists and intellectuals: Mohamed Melihi, Farid Belkahia, Mohamed Chebaa, Houssein Miloudi, Mohamed Loakira, Abdelkader Hariri, Mohammed Berrada, Abdelkebir Khatibi, and the Algerian poet and writer Rachid Boudjedra. Their discussions lead him to reflect on how to express his own culture through his work and to integrate the concept of epistemological demarcation in his artistic approach.

 

His daughter Molka is born.

 

 

 

 

Settles permanently in Tunisia and establishes his studio in La Marsa. 

 

Experiments with tapestry and sets up a high-warp loom in his studio, where a Tunisian craftswoman, Khira, executes several large-scale hand-knotted tapestries after his cartoons.

 

Travels to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and to Sana’a in Yemen.

 

First works on parchment and vellum – materials that he discovered in Cologne, Germany.

 

Creates Carrés, his first silkscreen portfolio, at the Atelier Paul Mabboux in Ecully, France.

 

Presents two experimental performances on the theme: L’Image de l’autre in collaboration with researchers from the UZH – Universität Zürich (Sociology Department) and the ETH Zürich – Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

 

Presents Écriture-Peinture, a research and theatre workshop, as well as the event Immigration et Identité (with a group of young immigrants) organized by Hachmi Ben Frej, the Tunisian civil society activist, in Grenoble, France.

 

Creates several large-scale bronze and golden brass mural bas-reliefs and high-warp tapestries (made in Felletin, France and by Ewald Kröner in Düsseldorf) in collaboration with Stélio Scamanga of AADC (Art & Design Consultants, Geneva) for the Royal Reception Pavilion of the King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah.

 

Awarded the King Abdulaziz Al Saud Honorary Medal and the Gold Medal of the City of Jeddah, in recognition of his artworks for the Jeddah and Riyadh International Airports projects.

 

Designs a kilim executed by the Tunisian master weaver Hmida Wahada, at the ONAT (National Office for Tunisian Handicrafts) workshop in Gafsa, Tunisia

 

Invited by professor Faouzi Mellah to give a lecture at the University of Geneva: Les arts plastiques dans le monde arabe et l’esthétique du signe calligraphique dans l’art contemporain.

 

Awarded the Ordre National du Mérite Culturel by the Tunisian Ministry of Culture.

 

His first monograph, Nja Mahdaoui, is published in collaboration with the Mauritian poet Édouard J. Maunick and the Tunisian writer Ezzedine Madani, issued by Cérès Productions in Tunis.

 

In collaboration with AADC, creates the second series of large-scale works (bronze and golden brass mural bas-reliefs, tapestries and a sculpture) for the King Khalid International Airport and the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency in Riyadh.

 

Creates Carré Rouge, a limited-edition (50/50) portfolio of 11 original silkscreens, at the Atelier Paul Mabboux in Ecully, France.

 

Presents Corps-Écriture I, a gesamtkunstwerk performance, at the Maison des Cultures du Monde in Paris. During this event, which includes video art and film projection, he deepens his experimentations with calligraphy on the human body, in collaboration with the Mexican actress Guadalupe Bocanegra and the French singer Maya Biasco.

 

United States of America Invited by the USIA (United States Information Agency) to take part in the International Visitor Programme (five weeks). Visits Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Fé, New York and Boston.

In California meets professors and students of the SFAI (San Francisco Art Institute), of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and of the CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) in Valencia; visits MoCA and LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Undertakes computer-assisted experiments with calligraphic works conducted by George Sabaugh, director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), and a group of researchers from the Linguistics Department at the same university. In Chicago meets students of the AIC (Art Institute of Chicago) and visits the Museum of Contemporary Art. In Boston visits the Fogg Art Museum, the Semitic Museum and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University. In New York meets students at MoMA PS1; visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MoMa, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

 

Presides over the Tunisian Committee of Visual Arts and lectures at the conference Le développement des échanges culturels entre la France et la Tunisie at the Palais du Luxembourg in Paris.

 

In conjunction with his solo exhibition Nja Mahdaoui, Artworks 1981–84, he art directs an experimental performance with the students of the Institute for the Blind in Sousse, in collaboration with their teacher and the theatre director Ridha Drira, at the Centre National d’Art Vivant in Tunis.

 

Builds his house and studio in La Marsa. Its design is based on Mahdaoui’s original graphemes, adapted by the architect Mira Leloumier. The IMA (Institut du monde arabe) and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Villeneuve d’Asq co-produce a documentary on this architectural work, realized by Gilbert Perlein for the exhibition Six Contemporary Tunisian Painters at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Villeneuve d’Ascq, Lille, France.

 

Cuba Guest of honour at the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Centre during the second Havana Biennial. Mahdaoui is welcomed by President Fidel Castro and his exhibition is inaugurated by Che Guevara’s father in the presence of Gabriel García Márquez and the Mexican artist Marta Palao. In the studio of the sculptress Rita Longa, he creates a monumental fresco with the Argentinian artist Julio Le Parc and a group of young artists from the Havana School of Fine Arts. He also produces a limited-edition silkscreen, Havana Libre, at René Portocarrero’s workshop, later donated to the Cuban Artists Association.

 

Presents Corps-Écriture II, a gesamtkunstwerk performance in collaboration with the Mexican actress Guadalupe Bocanegra, at Neue Galerie – Sammlung Ludwig in Aachen, Germany.

 

Invited by the French engraver Marc Pessin to create an exclusive grapheme for a limited-edition (15/15) art book of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s poetry, Élégie des circoncis, Nocturnes. The book is published by “Le Verbe et l’Empreinte” Atelier d’art and presented in the presence of the poet in Voreppe, France.

 

Canada Guest artist of the French-speaking countries at Nunatak: Symposium de la Jeune Peinture au Canada, Centre d’art de Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec.

Paints a large-scale canvas (5 x 1 m) in front of a live audience, then given to the Symposium. Presents Corps-Écriture III, a gesamtkunstwerk performance with the Canadian dancer and choreographer Miryam Moutillet at the Symposium Arena.

Meets the French art historian René Huygue and the American art critics Clement Greenberg and Karen Wilkin.

 

Gives the lecture Signe graphique entant qu’expression dans l’art contemporain arabe (alternative possible au discours occidental d’héritage et contre-proposition aux influences d’écoles) at the Iwalewa Centre (African Art Museum) of Bayreuth University, Germany.   

            

Co-creates the set design for the contemporary ballet Ikaa in collaboration with Anne-Marie Sellami’s contemporary dance company Ikaa, presented at El Teatro in Tunis. The choreography is inspired by Arabic letters and, in particular, by Mahdaoui’s work and artistic approach.

 

Co-curates the artistic event Écritures: à la rencontre de Michel Butor in collaboration with the Tunisian National Cultural Committee, the French Cultural Mission and the Canadian Embassy. It includes the exhibition 3 artistes maghrébins (Rachid Koraichi, Mehdi Qotbi, Nja Mahdaoui); the ballet Ikaa, inspired by Michel Butor’s work; and the panel discussion Écriture et Peinture in the presence of Michel Butor and moderated by Jamel Eddine Bencheikh.

 

The Art-Concept series is born of experimentations with a new medium – laminated melamine resin – in collaboration with the Tunisian company Stramica and later with the Belgian company Décodur. Raoul Van Loo (Décodur’s director) invites him to join the Creat workshop in Thieux, Île-de-France, to create experimental artworks both in laminated melamine resin and in aluchromy (anodized aluminium), presented the following year at Interzum (the Trade Fair of Innovation) in Cologne.

 

Co-creates Méta-Signes, a limited-edition (40/40) portfolio of 13 original silkscreens on the theme Tunisie, terre de rencontres, in collaboration with the Quebec painter and engraver Jacques Hudon, in the latter’s workshop at Baie-Saint-Paul. In order to create these four-hand artworks, at first Mahdaoui travels to Baie-Saint-Paul and then Hudon visits several cities in Tunisia.

 

Co-creates a punched-wood furniture collection in collaboration with Slah Smaoui – the Tunisian architect and founder of Espace Kèn (City of Arts and Crafts) in Bou Ficha – reproducing Mahdaoui’s original graphemes. The collection is presented the same year at the Centre Culturel International de Hammamet and is awarded the Grand Prize of the ONAT at the Salon annuel de la création in Le Kram, Tunisia, in 1990.

 

Starts to collaborate regularly with Mohamed Aziza, rector of the Euro-Arab Itinerant University. Donates an artwork on the occasion of the inauguration of its head office in Palazzo Baleani, Rome.

 

Gives the lecture Présence de la culture dans le dialogue Nord-Sud at the Nord-Sud 5th Euro-Arab Itinerant University, held inBarcelona.

 

Presides the jury of the sixth Visual Arts Annual Exhibition produced by the Abu Dhabi Cultural Foundation at the Abu Dhabi Cultural Centre. Organizes an open painting workshop in collaboration with several Emirati artists and the poet Habib Sayegh, where an audience of various ages is invited to collaborate on the making of three large-scale paintings (20 x 1.6 m).

 

Givres the lecture La vision prémonitoire de Paul Klee, de Bâle à Kairouan at La ville de l’autre 6th Euro-Arab Itinerant University, held in Montpellier, France.

 

Co-creates Pas de Deux, a series of 30 original artworks on Zanders Arches vellum paper in collaboration with the German artist Wolfgang Heuwinkel and the manufacturer Zanders Feinpapiere. Their collaboration lasts one year, between Bergisch Gladbach in Germany and La Marsa in Tunisia, without them speaking a common language.

 

Gives the lecture L’Orient des Vérités at The Thousand and One Nights: Source of Inspiration 7th Euro-Arab Itinerant University, held at the University of Palermo in Sicily.

 

Creates La Volupté d’en mourir, conte de ‘Alî Ben Bakkâr et Shams an-Nahâr, tiré des Mille et Une Nuits, a limited-edition (40/40) portfolio of original silkscreens, at the Atelier Paul Mabboux in Ecully, France. This portfolio presents contemporary illustrations for one of the tales from The Thousand and One Nights, translated from Arabic into French by the Algerian writer and scholar of Arabic literature Jamel Eddine Bencheikh from three editions (the Bulaq, the Macnaghten or Calcutta II and Mohsen Mahdi or Leiden), offering the most complete version of the tale so far.

 

Designs Hidjaz, a one-off large-scale hand-made wool and silk tapestry, executed by the Tunisian craftswoman Radhia Cherif at the ONAT workshop in Den Den, Tunisia.

 

Presents the painting and dance performance Tolérance et métissage culturel with the French dancer and theatre director Odile Azagury on the occasion of his solo exhibition for L’histoire en fête: 732, de Poitiers à Cordoue, la Rencontre at the Espace Mendès France in Poitiers.

 

Art directs a musical performance in collaboration with the Tunisian singer Mouna Amari on the occasion of his solo exhibition Les Mille et Une Nuits for the conference Mathématiques et reflets andalous en Occitanie, produced by the AMAM (Analyse Monde Arabe et Méditerranée) research group from the Université de Toulouse II – Le Mirail, at the Bibliothèque Municipale, Toulouse.

 

Gives a lecture for the conference Hommage à la Médecine arabe, produced by the Arab World Institute, the LFEEP (Ligue Française de l’Enseignement et de l’Éducation Permanente) and the Paul Valéry University – Montpellier III, at the École de Médecine in Montpellier.

 

Gives a lecture at the Amman Symposium 8th Euro-Arab Itinerant University held in Amman, Jordan.

 

Member of the Jury of the UNESCO International Arts Prize in 1993, 1994 and 1995, recommended by the Japanese artist Kaii Higashiyama.

 

In Villanova, Barcelona, creates a theatre and dance “manifesto” performance in collaboration with a group of Spanish dancers and actresses for the event Viol Planétaire organized by Lamice Amari, co-ordinator of Berlin-based Utopia 93 (International Association of Visuals Arts).

 

Creates and offers an original artwork for the monumental book, Le Livre International de la Paix by Chantal Bernard. The book includes contributions by Nobel recipients, major religious figures, writers, politicians and artists in collaboration with UNESCO, France. In 2002 he will be invited at the solemn ceremony at the Mémorial de Caen, in France, where all the original artworks will be offered to the Red Cross.

 

Gives the lecture Métasignes, complémentarités et differences at the conference Métissage du texte: Bretagne, Maghreb, Québec at the Université de Rennes II, France.

 

Gives a lecture at the 9th Euro-Arab Itinerant University, held in Marmara University, Istanbul.

 

Jury member of the second Saudi Art Competition produced by Saudi Arabian Airlines in Jeddah.

 

Between 1995 and 1997 creates ten wool and silk tapestries – six hand-knotted on a high-warp loom and four hand-woven on a low-warp loom – at the ONAT workshops in Den Den and Djerba, Tunisia.

 

Creates Aya & Aya, a limited-edition (40/40) portfolio in collaboration with the Saudi novelist Raja Alem, designed at the Tunisian studio Initial and printed by Grafi Center in Tunis.

 

Art directs a poetry performance in collaboration with the Saudi novelist Raja Alem on the occasion of his solo exhibition East & West at the Rida Art Gallery, Jeddah.

 

Decorates the Juffali Help Center (Ahmed Al Juffali Foundation) in Jeddah with six large-scale tapestries and the Carré Rouge and Hidjaz I silkscreen portfolios.

 

Japan Invited by the Japan Foundation to the International Cultural Exchange Programme: Invitations to Distinguished Visitors. He stays a month in Japan and visits Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara. In Tokyo presents the Carré Rouge solo exhibition and gives the lecture Concept de la transformation de l’espace pictural at the Japan Foundation Headquarters; meets the Japanese artist Koïchi Sato and the director of the O Art Museum – Tokyo, Kazuo Amano; meets the Professors Emeritus Sugiura Kohei of Kobe Design University and Masataka Takeshita (Department of Islamic Studies) of the University of Tokyo. In Nara meets the ceramist and calligrapher Matsumoto Hiroyuki.

 

Creates a monumental live artwork (1.5 x 15 m) during a public hearing – 33 live testimonies of women coming from 14 different Arab countries – held by the Arab Women’s Court (To Resist Violence Against Women) in Beirut, organized by the AWO (Arab Women Organization) with the assistance of human rights organizations including the international NGO, El Taller. The artwork was donated to El Taller and exhibited at the Beijing Conference, in Cuba and in Johannesburg.

 

1996 

Co-creates Joussour, a musical performance on the theme Le Tambour, métaphore de la spiritualité populaire, in collaboration with the Tunisian musician and sociologist Salwa Ben Hafaiedh. Creates the choreography and set design (six wall-hangings used as backdrops and calligraphic designs on drums) for a group of 30 male and female darbouka percussionists and singers, wearing waistcoats also designed by Mahdaoui. Performed in Tunisia at: Medersa Slimaniya, Tunis; Université de Tunis I – Faculté des Sciences Humaines et Sociales; Faculté des Lettres, des Arts et des Humanités de la Manouba, Tunis; Mahjoub oil-works, Tébourba; IPEST (Institut préparatoire aux études scientifiques et techniques), La Marsa; and the Tunis Central Railway Station.

 

Invited to the Asia Art Forum 1994–1996, Asian Lettering and Calligraphy: the Past, Present and Future, including artists from India, China and Japan, curated by the professor Shuichi Kato and produced by the JAL Foundation at the Nikko Hotel in Tokyo.

 

Presents the lecture Les chemins de la calligraphie arabe (Interférences calligraphiques: Sources et devenir).

 

Invited by the Ministry of Higher Education to supervise degree-show works on the theme of The Thousand and One Nights by students at the Institut Supérieur des Animateurs Culturels de Bir el-Bey, Tunis. They present the theatre performance Notre seconde nuit après les mille at the Centre Culturel de l’Ariana in Tunis.

 

Gives the lecture De Bâle à Kairouan, regard sur l’itinéraire de Paul Klee at Peindre la mer fourth Art Week, Université de Tunis I – Faculté des Sciences Humaines et Sociales.

 

1997 

Creates Hidjaz I, a limited-edition (50/50) portfolio of six original silkscreens at the Atelier Paul Mabboux, Ecully, France.

 

Creates exclusive designs for eleven handmade embroidered dresses (featuring the Raf Raf traditional technique) in collaboration with the Tunisian fashion designer Amel Esseghir.

 

On the occasion of his solo exhibition Tribute to Nja Mahdaoui at La Calligraphie arabe, Signes et Signifiances, fifth Pictorial Art Week, within Tunis – UNESCO Arab Capital of Culture 1997, Université de Tunis I – Faculté des Sciences Humaines et Sociales, gives the lecture Les chemins de la Calligraphie and participates in the panel discussion Nja Mahdaoui and his audience.

 

Presents L’Art en Soie, a theatre performance in collaboration with the Tunisian fashion designer Amel Esseghir on the occasion of his solo exhibition L’esthétique du signe within Les Journées Nationales de la Calligraphie Arabe at the Académie Tunisienne des Sciences‚ des Lettres et des Arts Beït El Hikma, Carthage.

 

Creates Marateb-Al-‘Ishq, an art book featuring the dialogue and correspondence between Mahdaoui and the Saudi novelist Raja Alem, combining his graphemes with Raja’s texts; the book is designed by the Tunisian studio Initial and published by Éditions Simpact in Tunis.

 

Presents a painting performance and gives the lecture Manifeste pour une esthétique du signe: création et authenticité at the Bristish Museum, London.

 

Presents a painting performance in collaboration with the Spanish writer Rodrigo de Zayas, organized by professor Lucette Heller-Goldenberg at the Deutsche Welle in Cologne.

 

Presents Marateb-Al-‘Ishq as an art book and exhibition and gives the lecture Le visible et l’intelligible at the conference Paraules magribines, identitats plurals, produced by the AELC (Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana) at the Centre Cívic Pati Llimona in Barcelona.

 

Moderator, with the Tunisian doctor Hechemi Dhaoui, of the conference Arts plastiques et Thérapie at the second Congrès National de Médecine Interne, organized by the Tunisian Ministry of Public Health in Tunis.

 

Creates the external designs of four airplanes (one Boeing and three Airbuses) to mark the 50th anniversary of Gulf Air. International competition winning project presented in collaboration with Miracle Graphics.

 

Creates Chrara: Graphèmes libres, a dance and theatre performance in collaboration with the Tunisian actress Latifa Fekiri. The performer responds to the music and interacts with the free graphemes of the artworks on stage through her body movements and spontaneous dance. This intricate dialectics transform the visual space into a meta-language. Presented in 2000 at El Teatro (alongside Mahdaoui’s exhibition Droit à la Mémoire); in 2001 at El Hamra Theatre, Tunis; IPEST, LaMarsa; Mainz University Meetings, Germany; Kaisersaal Parlamentarische Gesellschaft (German Parliament), Berlin; and Friedrich-Ebert Foundation, Bonn, Germany; in 2002 at the Souk Okadh festival, Amman and the Festival de l’Imaginaire, Maison des Cultures du Monde, Paris.

 

Releases Nûn, a limited-edition album featuring his artworks and a compilation of texts on his artistic approach, published by Éditions Simpact in Tunis.

 

Creates original graphemes for the limited-edition book Badr Chaker Es Sayyâb: Les poems de Djaykoûr, in collaboration with the Lebanese poet Salah Stétié and the French publisher Fata Morgana.

 

Gives the lecture Maqâm As-Safa at the Rencontres Internationales de Carthage: Qu’est-ce que la vie?, Beït El Hikma, Carthage.

 

Creates La Volupté d’en mourir, conte de ‘Alî Ben Bakkâr et Shams an-Nahâr, tiré des Mille et Une Nuits, an art book published by Éditions Alternatives in Paris. This book is a reproduction of the silkscreen portfolio La Volupté d’en mourir from 1992.

 

Writes an essay on calligraphy entitled L’Art-Calligraphie, published by L’Or du Temps in Tunis.

 

Presents the art book La Volupté d’en mourir with Jamel Eddine Bencheikh at the Café Littéraire (moderator Badr-Eddine Arodaky) and exhibits the silkscreen portfolio of the same name, IMA (Institute du monde arabe), Paris.

 

In collaboration with the Institut français Köln, presents the silkscreen portfolio La Volupté d’en mourir at the French pavilion of the Frankfurt Book Fair. Takes part in the panel discussion The Thousand and One Nights, together with the Iraqi poet and translator Kadhim Jihad Hassan and the French specialist of Arab literature and civilization, Professor Emeritus Edgard Weber.

 

Creates the art book Le Maître d’amour in collaboration with the Spanish writer Rodrigo de Zayas, published by Éditions Albin Michel in Paris. This tribute to the great Andalusian Sufi master Ibn Arabi, includes graphic compositions from the Carré Rouge and Suite des Nuits (Hidjaz I) silkscreen portfolios.

 

Gives the lecture L’antagonisme entre la dialectique artistique et la raison at the eighth Rencontres Internationales de Carthage: Le réel et l’imaginaire en politique, dans la science et dans l’art, Beït El Hikma, Carthage.

 

Awarded the Prix National des Arts et des Lettres by the Ministry of Culture of Tunisia.

 

Designs stained-glass windows for the Dôme du Lac building in the Lake of Tunis, produced in collaboration with Vitrail France, Le Mans, France.

Awarded the UNESCO Crafts Prize for the Arab States at the Creative Crafts Fair in Le Kram, Tunisia for “his remarkable contribution in the field of stained-glass windows”.

 

Creates four large-scale original artworks for Saudi Aramco in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

 

Awarded the Ordre national du Mérite Culturel by the Ministry of Culture of Tunisia.

 

Co-creates Noon: Art, bridge between the cultures and dialogue for peace, a one-of-a-kind jewellery piece, in collaboration with Agatino Cappella, Italian metal engraver, painter, sculptor and president of the Ponte dei Saraceni association. This hand-made bas-relief, engraved at Arte Bulino in Sicily using the old burin technique, is presented at UNESCO, Paris and at the Théâtre du 4ème Art, Tunis, on the International Day of Peace.

 

Creates original graphemes for the decoration of the Eldorador Aladin Djerba Hotel, Djerba Island, Tunisia.

 

Invited to introduce his work to students of the School of Architecture and Design at the American University of Sharjah.

 

Creates Noor and Beya, two limited-edition (8/8) lost-wax bronze sculptures, produced at the Rosini Foundry in Paris.

 

Creates exclusive graphemes for Scintilla Monaco’s 1001 Nights jewellery collection, executed by the Italian designer Giampiero Borsari in Dubai.

 

Creates Hidjaz II, a limited-edition (50/50) portfolio of six original silkcreens, at the Atelier Arcay in Paris.

 

Commissioned by UAP (Urban Art Projects) – as part of the KAUST International Art Program developed by KAUST & Aramco International – to create exclusive graphemes for the large-scale panels of the minaret and the prayer room of the Campus Mosque of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia.

 

Invited to realize artworks on Meissen porcelains for the Meissen artCAMPUS artist-in-residence programme, gathering artists from Europe, USA, Middle East and Asia, in Meissen, Germany.

 

Creates Maqam Essafa, a limited-edition (4/4) lost-wax bronze sculpture, produced at Susse Foundry in Paris; the gold-leaf gilding is carried out at Ateliers Gohard in Paris. The whole process – creation of the 3D model from the original 2D calligraphic designs, the moulds and the final bronze – took over a year of work and collaborations, from June 2010 to July 2011.

 

On the occasion of his exhibition in Los Angeles, professor Owen Doonan of the California State University Northridge invites him to stage an experimental performance in collaboration with the Art Department students; and professor Nouri Gana (Departments of Comparative Literature & Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) invites him to lecture at UCLA.

 

Gives the lecture Errance de la lettre peinte entre le Signifiant et le Signifié at the conference Crossing the Line: Drawing in the Middle East – Intersections of transdisciplinary practice and understanding, co-produced by the American University in Dubai, RMIT University Melbourne and Tashkeel, held at the American University of Dubai.

 

2012 

Creates Traces en Soie, a one-off Aubusson tapestry, in collaboration with Art et Tissages de France. Hand-woven on a low-warp loom by the French master weaver Bernard Battu at his studio in Aubusson, France.

 

Creates On the Banks of Geniuses. The first harbour: Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in collaboration with the Syrian writer and poet Yola Bahnassi. Her literary impressions of the book My Vision by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum are illustrated by Mahdaoui’s graphemes and paintings. The book is designed by the Tunisian studio Initial, published by Salhani Printing in Damascus and presented at Art Dubai 2013.

 

Creates original graphemes for the limited-edition book Gisants, in collaboration with the Tunisian poet Moëz Majed and the French publisher Fata Morgana.

 

Live creation of an artwork to benefit the Noor Dubai Foundation in collaboration with four young Emirati artists, hosted and organized by Christie’s Dubai at Emirates Towers in Dubai under the patronage of the UAE Minister of Culture, HE Abdul Rahman Al Owais.

 

Presents Segni d’incontro, two live painting performances in collaboration with the Italian artist Agostino Ferrari, held at Confini: International Festival of Visual Arts in the Mediterranean produced by the Horcynus Orca Foundation. One is hosted at the University of Architecture and the other is a street performance in front of the Teatro Comunale Francesco Cilea in Reggio Calabria, Italy.

 

Member of the Scientific Committee for The Thousand and One Nights exhibition, curated by Elodie Bouffard and Anne-Alexandra Joyard at the IMA (Institut du monde arabe) in Paris.

 

Creates exclusive designs for Noor, a fashion collection of sixteen dresses in collaboration with Khatam (Yasmina Qanzal and Raneem Farsi), presented at the Bisat Al Reeh Ramadan Fair, Al Harthi Exhibition Centre, Jeddah.

 

Creates the art book Kun in collaboration with the Tunisian poet Kaouther Titch, designed by the Tunisian studio Initial and published by Éditions Simpact in Tunis. Presented by Ezzedine Madani and Ahmed Touili at the Bibliothèque nationale in Tunis.

 

Creates exclusive designs for six dresses for Marios Schwab’s Calligrams Autumn/Winter collection, presented at the London Fashion Week.

 

Presents Segni d’incontro, a street performance and a workshop in collaboration with the Italian artist Agostino Ferrari, produced by the association Dal Segno alla Scrittura for Internaturalità at the PAV – Living Art Park and Experimental Centre of Contemporary Art in Turin.

 

Invited by the London-based artist Soraya Syed to co-create Noon, a live artwork in collaboration with the UAE calligrapher Wissam Shawkat, for the launch of the Nuqta mobile web app during Art Dubai.

 

Launches his first comprehensive monograph, Nja Mahdaoui - Jafr. The Alchemy of Signs, published by Skira – Milan.

 

Creates original designs for the exterior glass facades of the ALECSO (Arab League Educational, Culture and Sciences Organisation) Headquarters, Tunis.

 

Jury Member and Guest of honour at the sixth Sharjah Calligraphy Biennial

 

Creates Majz, a monumental calligraphy live performance, at (Re) Birth, Performing Arts Programme of Abu Dhabi Art Fair, curated by Fabrice Bousteau, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi.

 

Receives the First Prize (Best Global Artist category) at the Global Art Award, Armani Hotel, Dubai.

 

Creates the ‘AWJ’ Window mural designs for Facebook Artist in Residence Program, Facebook’s on-site art initiative. Facebook Menlo Park Headquarters, Palo Alto, California.

 

Gives a lecture and performance at the Khawla Art & Culture Foundation, Abu Dhabi, UAE

 

Gives a lecture at the exhibition ‘Carthago, The Immortal Myth’, produced by Electa, Colosseo Foro Romano, Rome.

 

Participates to the Symposium ‘Les Grands Rendez-Vous de Dar Sebastian’ on Nja Mahdaoui, Centre Culturel International de Hammamet, Tunisia.

 

Participates in the Typographics Conference, an online conference series focused on the contemporary use of type.