OpenSpace UAE, the Dubai-based arts and culture platform, covered Tempted By Other Suns, Béchir Boussandel's solo exhibition at Tabari Artspace, Dubai, staged in partnership with B7L9 Art Centre (Kamel Lazaar Foundation) and running from June into September 2025. Published without an individual byline, the piece frames the Dubai show as an expanded version of the exhibition's earlier presentation in Tunis, extending the artist's material experiments with displacement and resilience.
The article describes Boussandel's abstract canvases, made by soaking raw canvas and leaving it exposed to the elements on rooftops in Bizerte before layering oil pigments in the studio, producing surfaces it likens to eroded landscapes and "affective terrains" rather than literal maps. New to the Dubai showing are blown-glass sculptures made with Sadika studio: vessels cast from real plastic bottles collected by berbasha, the plastic gleaners of Tunis, each fitted with a small bird cast in aluminium or copper to suggest stilled migration. Named works include the painting Sans Titre 2 (2024), the diptych Cactus (2025), and the glass pieces WB11 and WB2 (2025).
Tempted By Other Suns extends the territorial and diasporic concerns Béchir Boussandel first set out in Land Survey at Tabari Artspace, moving from painted strata into cast glass and metal. Readers following the article should look at the Tempted By Other Suns exhibition page for the full Dubai checklist and installation views.
