Tunisian Peinture Sous Verre – A History in Reverse
Episode 222 Tunisian Peinture Sous Verre – A History in Reverse This lecture provides an introduction to reverse glass painting in Tunisia, a predominantly figurative form of Islamic art that is often referred to as a “popular” tradition. As very little archival material and original documentation exists, most of what we know about this painting practice comes from collections, scholarship, and stories told about it from the 1960s and on, over one hundred years after it had already been well established in Tunisia. To highlight this belated epistemology, the presentation follows a reverse chronology of the medium. After briefly introducing the technique and artistic process, it starts from the contemporary moment and moves backwards in time to the post-independence era, the Protectorate period, and earlier. It ends with some speculations about the connections between Tunisian under-glass painting and other historical or regional visual-material practices. Ava Katarina Tabataba...
