In May 2022, Sonia Kacem took part in the residency program at l’Atelier Selma Feriani Gallery.The idea of abstraction and what it represents in the Arab world interested Kacem even before her residency at L’Atelier Selma Ferani Gallery. Once in Tunis, Kacem’s wanderings in the Bhar Lazreg neighborhood (an artisanal and industrial district where the studio is located) served as a landmark to define her forms, gestures, and colors.
The random scratches and engravings on the concrete walls she encountered often implied a spontaneous gesture rather than a precise and well-measured approach. This motivated her to create paintings and patterns emanating from the various impressions she gathered during her visit to Tunis.
Initially, her intuitive movements guided her thoughts through the enclosed space of the Gallery. Consequently, the idea of a concept that could be present in each room as a leitmotif took hold to act as a guide and a common thread to navigate of the different spaces.
Her watercolor books, a tool ever-present in this residency and in that of Cairo, served as a base for her work to document her stay in Tunis. Influenced by urban life, stories she heard and the emotions she felt when in urban environments (or settings), whether it is the soundscapes, stories, the architecture and its volumes, everything has been translated into colors and forms that reflect the characters they have transmitted to the artist.
Usually, Sonia Kacem responds to spaces insitu by working on large-scale installations with more sculptural environments where the audience navigates between artifacts.
For the Jelliz & Gestes, Kacem studied the gallery’s blueprints as volumes nested within space. She noticed that rooms were generally rectangular, placed one after the other, producing a sense of reaching a dead-end and turning back. The repetitive act of forms, such are gestures in her watercolor books served as a leitmotif also present in traditional Tunisian architecture.
This work was done in close collaboration with different artisans, aligning discussions with feasibility and know-how. This gave form to a multi-layered idea through knowledge transfer that serves as an intrinsic component to the realization of her works.
The patterns are not just ornamental, each having a form and characteristic that serve a purpose in each tile and can convey meaning through their creation and interpretation. The form thus becomes a transmissible and translatable language handled as typography written with different hands.

Working manually with gestures involves a sensitive study of the color, the brushstroke and its direction. An expert master craftsman guided her through the process. The act of enlarging, of passing from the watercolor to an enameling which reacts to heat provided an opening to draw from ancestral know-how, centuries old and present in decorations of traditional houses.
Echoing Chamla’s ceramic panels, Kacem thought of her interactions with urban space as a contemporary composition in a built-in environment of patterns.
The master artisan managed the entire process of constructing the clay tile, from shaping to drying it until it was dry enough to go in the oven. Engineering the shape involves consideration for changes that occur from heat in the kiln.

Kacem emphasizes the importance of gesture transfer, demystifying the form as the tiles are glazed by hand one at a time.
The collaboration was characterized by a fruitful exchange of ideas, movement, character and knowledge brought to the ceramic panels. The artisans she collaborated with had a great deal of knowledge of the artistic process and could bring that expertise in service of the idea.
The titles “Arches, Lunes, croix et points” serve as keys to read the abstract forms on the ceramics helping to communicate the context in which they were perceived and as codes of communication and identification of specific patterns between the artisans and the artist.
There is a sense of intendedness and even poetry in these compositions, as different hands have appropriated, repeated and interpreted them. The architecture of the space has been strongly amplified by color creating an atmosphere by altering the empirical experience of the viewer.
Jelliz & Gestes, is a sequel of an urban experience translating Sonia Kacem’s expressions and impressions into shapes and vibrations. The idea was to create a sense of energy and movement in space, drawing the viewer’s eye and creating a dynamic visual experience.
The use of pattern on pattern creates a complex image that requires both a sense of proximity for a detailed view and a step back for an overall perception. The public is thus confronted with different angles of interpretation and submerged by different scales of patterns and the intonations of colors.