There are civilizations that have left many archaeological traces, and these traces can be seen in certain museums, in history books, in the minds that have been handed down their history.
Other civilizations are less well known, or totally unknown because their histories have been forgotten, erased, drowned under water, or because their stories are passed on in other ways. Aïcha Snoussi and the LIXE archaeological mission are in the process of uncovering one of them: the Tchech civilization, a queer, African, nomadic civilization, traces of which have been found off the Tunisian island of Zembra, as well as on the coast of Ouidah.
This civilization has a set of practices, rituals, powers and cults that the Lixe mission is perpetuating through this exhibition, in a duty to pass on to future generations. This transmission takes the form of gestures, installations, devices
devices, sounds, experiences and a range of arrangements that activate this invisible memory.
Civilization is attached to the cult of the sea, as well as that of the sun. It has a particular language, one that cannot be read with language. Its color is vermania, blue-green, and the four elements are omnipresent. The Tchechs are neither men nor women nor man-women. Bodies are infinite possibilities, as are sexual practices around objects. Each space here activates a particular practice, thousands of years old, but which only takes shape through present-day elements. This process is the key to passage.
The history of the Tchechs takes shape and comes to life through the objects on display. Each room tells this story, in a form other than the words in a book. Lixe and the artist have been receptive and transmitting bodies, delivering a 3000-year-old message. A message that comes from the depths, that can be read between the layers, in the cellars. A queer message passed on by our ancestors, lovers between the shores.
"A practice of the underground, the hidden, the invisible already crosses my work in an archaeological approach. Around reinvested objects, places and memory, open and dug notebooks, encyclopedias returned like an excavation site, engraved bones. There is a desire to cross time in a non-linear direction, towards the depths. Go from point zero, towards -1, -2, -99. Slipping in the earth, in the paper, in the history, in bodies."
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​Aïcha Snoussi
Born in 1989, in Tunis. Lives and works in Paris. Aïcha Snoussi is a graduate of the Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Tunis and the University of the Sorbonne. Trained as an engraver, drawing in black ink is at the center of her experiments. From in situ frescoes to notebook installations, drawing is thought of as a tool for excavation and deconstruction - developed around queer and feminist fictions. Anticodexxx, the book of anomalies or even undefined scrolls are anti-knowledge projects that question established norms and dominant thought by creating other possible imaginaries.
By resorting to fiction, to the functions of the encyclopedia and to in situ experimentation, the drawing is thought of as an operation which would attempt to carve up things and anchored knowledge, such as the norms of gender, body and sexualities.