Tyburn Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of photographic work from the Tunisian artist Mouna Karray’s post-revolution series Nobody Will Talk About Us. The exhibition marks the artist’s first solo show in the UK. 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.
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. Currently living and working between Paris and Sfax, Karray merges socio-political themes with personal experience to explore constructions of identity and memory. Her work has been exhibited at museums including: Smithsonian National Museum of African Art Washington, MMK Frankfurt, MAXXI Rome, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Lisbon, Edge of Arabia London, Institut de Monde Arabe Paris and Photoquai at Musée du quai Branly, Paris. Karray’s work was included in Tyburn Gallery’s inaugural exhibition Broken English in 2015. She has taught photography and curated exhibitions in Tunisia.