Tabari Artspace and B7L9 Art Centre (Kamel Lazaar Foundation) Present Béchir Boussandel
As French philosopher Claire Marin asserts, “Like migratory birds, we are always tempted by other suns.”
Following its debut in Tunis, Tempted By Other Suns, a solo exhibition of Béchir Boussandel, travels to Dubai, where it continues at Tabari Artspace, 3 June-5 September 2025.
For Béchir Boussandel—an artist of Tunisian heritage, raised in France—the first chapter of this exhibition marked a significant personal landmark, as it was his first time exhibiting in Tunisia. Born in Dunkirk and deeply rooted in Bizerte, Tunisia, Béchir works across painting, blown glass, metal, and organic materials to tell stories of migration, urban transformation, and survival. Through a layered and symbolic approach, he constructs a material language that feels delicate and durable.
His process often begins on the rooftop of his childhood home in Bizerte, where canvases are immersed in water, initiating a dialogue between surface and environment. In the studio, oil paint is added to produce aerial topographies—imagined geographies that speak of the tension between dislocation and belonging.
The Dubai iteration of this show introduces a new body of work in blown glass, marking a departure from Béchir’s predominantly canvas-based practice. These works centre on the figure of the gleaner—known locally as berbasha—individuals who collect waste to survive. The exhibition’s title borrows from French philosopher Claire Marin: “Like migratory birds, we are always tempted by other suns.” One can’t help but think of the barbechas, those who have come from far away, gleaning from the ground, some still dreaming of crossing into Europe. This series was sparked by a simple drawing of a water bottle with a bird perched atop, which evolved into a deeper meditation on marginality in a world where borders appear porous but remain inaccessible to many.
This narrative took shape through a chance encounter in the Bhar lazreg neighbourhood of Tunis, where Béchir met a young Senegalese man collecting plastic bottles to fund a clandestine journey to Europe. Following him to the waste depot, the artist saw not only discarded bottles and cans but also fragments of lives, each object carrying the weight of survival and aspiration. To materialize this, Béchir created plaster molds from found plastic, which were then used to blow glass in collaboration with Tunis-based glassblower Sadika. The resulting forms—at once precise and full of ‘happy accidents’—render plastic ephemera as luminous, weighty vessels. In using glass, a material associated with fragility and transparency, Béchir stages a tension with the rigidity of real-world boundaries: human, environmental, and political.
Further extending this metaphor, birds cast in aluminium and copper are perched on these glass vessels, invoking the migratory bird—unbound by passports, documents, or borders. But in Béchir’s vision, they too are stilled. Their weight renders them immobile, rooted on delicate glass forms—capturing the tension between the instinct to move and the limits imposed by society.
Tenté par d'autres soleils unfolds as a cross-cultural dialogue—between cities, materials, and lived realities. In its migration from Tunis to Dubai, it opens up questions about value, visibility, and the evolving notion of home.
