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June 10, 2009

BIRDNEST

The Bimonthly Reader’s Digest of the Network of English-Speaking Tunisians

Goodbye Europe, Hello Rest of the World By Tarek Cheniti

In the past 40 years or so Tunisians have done their best to try and move closer to the EU, if not politically, then at least economically, culturally and academically. Yet they are increasingly faced with bureaucratic hurdles and cumbersome procedures, as if there were an inexorable process that aims at discouraging and eventually banning them from that part of the world. Yes countries do have the right to monitor the flow of people crossing their borders, but they cannot and should not nurture unjustified fears and received ideas about particular categories of travelers. Had we employed futurists in our government back in the 1960’s, we would have anticipated and accounted for the current economic woes of this continent and the rightist turn it has taken. We would have never subjected 80% of our economy to the ups and downs of a group of aging and self-centered societies that represent a tiny fraction of the world population. We would have learnt English too, thus reaching out to 2.5 billion potential consumers for our products and services. We would have spared ourselves the dreadful experience of being looked

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at suspiciously at every airport, treated as mere statistics in government databases; asked to give out your personal details and biometric data and think of ourselves as holders of a ‘wrong’ type of passport. We will certainly have to go on doing business with the EU in the next few years, but the time has come for us to end our dependence on it. One does not have to be a geopolitical expert to be able to affirm that Europe has had its heydays and they are over now. Why should we, on the other shore, suffer the consequences of this decline? Why does Tunisia have to slow down when Europe does, but still be complacent with its meager 5% growth when Europe is doing pretty well? I also wonder why we still need visas to visit many non-European countries with which we have no history of migration or dominance. Do we not have embassies in or close to Argentina, Chile, China, India and the Philippines? The combined population of these five nations suffices to grant us access to a market that is 7 times bigger, far younger and more consumerist than the EU. Would our

diplomats please tell us what is stopping them from signing agreements to abolish mutual visas with these countries like we did with Brazil and Japan? Let us learn from the experience of Malaysia, a country that has successfully turned the unfair rules of international relations to its own advantage. Whilst Malaysians adopt an open borders policy with the rest of the world, they have reformed their education and industry in ways that allowed them to develop their own capabilities and thus become less vulnerable to the political choices of foreign governments. The institutional and mindset reforms led by Mahathir Bin Mohamed sustained a 9% growth rate which was necessary for superb schemes such as the Multimedia Super Corridor, Putrajaya and the Petronas Towers to see the light. It allowed the country to develop a vigorous high-tech industry and attract extraordinary foreign investment over the past decades. I believe this is the way forward for a country like ours; it is neither mass tourism nor on textiles. We do have the competence to carry out a similar transformation, but where is the will?

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BIRDNESTBIMONTHLY June 10, 2009

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Rajaa A. Gharbi www.rajaagharbi.com Rajaa A. Gharbi is a highly respected and loved poet and artist. She was born and raised in Mediterranean Tunisia and has been writing and painting for as long as she can remember. A 1970s National Fencing champion in her native homeland, and a multimedia artist with the Troupe Nationale de Theatre de Marionnettes in Tunis since Middle school, she had to choose between a life-long commitment to Fencing or the arts. She left her national team’s fencing strips and her gold medals for literature, and multimedia arts. Gharbi has also lived in Morocco, her grandfathers' homeland, Spain and France where she has created artwork in poetry and film. She has been living in the United States and Tunisia since 1982. Although she writes every day, gharbi limits her published literary work to distilled selections. Gharbi is the first North African English language poet in the United States to have been published and awarded public funding for literary work (1986-2006). Her poetry and visual art have been published, presented, critiqued and anthologized by literary and art scholars from North Africa and the United states. She has read from her published poetry and proems, and has had her visual artwork presented at local, national and international events, solo and group exhibitions since 1989. Between 1998 and 2008 her poetry and paintings were celebrated in a number of events that include a 2006 Honor retrospective exhibition, poetry recital, and book signing of her book of poems and paintings’ titled ...From Songs of a Grasshopper (Kehna Publications

2004). This event was given by H.E. Mohamed Najib Hachana, Ambassador of Tunisia to the United States in Washington DC. Among these events also was a special inclusion in the new Anthology of Arab American Artists, Artists of the American Mosaic, Dr Fayeq S. Oweis (Heinemann 2007). In 2007 she was nominated for the Seattle Mayor’s Artistic Achievement Award, and the Horace Mann Achievement Award. In 2006 Dr. Najib Redouane, North African professor of Literature and Literary critic presented an extensive study of her poetry and paintings at the Eighth International Symposium on Comparative Literature, Cairo, Egypt. In 2006, on the occasion of Tunisia’s 50th year of independence Gharbi was the first North African English language poet to be invited to publish paintings and poetry work in the international Expressions Maghrebines anthology. Rajaa A. Gharbi owes most of her “informal” education in language and art to her parents, her paternal grand-mother, her native and her adoptive homelands. Her formal graduate and undergraduate education is in fine art, filmmaking, creative writing, and socio-linguistics with a MA degree in Transcultural Communications. Gharbi is a member of the Academy of American Poets and Washington Lawyers for the Arts. She is currently the editor and translator of the first US English Language anthology of North African literature (2009) and preparing for her upcoming (2009) exhibition of new works titled “Psychies”.

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BIRDNESTBIMONTHLY June 10, 2009

Profile Rajaa Gharbi’s Interview By Slim Menzli

The word as a communication channel has been for me You are both a painter and a poet Do you feel a need part necessity, part inheritance. In the late 1800s my paternal for more than one “communication channel” to great grand-father was a baach mofti. It looks like he really had convey your message? to use language! His I read your question as two questions. It’s “My work’s development relies on a daughter, my grandpossible that my answer is somewhat indirect. multidisciplinary art practice especially mother had inherited his First I want to clarify the “message” part. focused on visual or written poetry. I’m linguistic passion and Although all texts, visual or other, are always carriers of “messages”, intentionally or not, a always in conversation with family, friends developed it into her own and colleagues from the artists’ universal art form establishing pre-determined message in my paintings is herself as the beys’ extremely rare. When there is one, it’s usually tribe, living or long deceased. And I am professional story-teller. not consciously planned, but is a natural always in conversation with nature.” Her son, my father, was outcome of the exploration and investigative his happiest and on his aspect of the work. It’s an unequivocal visual Rajaa Gharbi best behavior when he commentary on my discoveries and “findings”, if you will, a spoke to us exclusively in proverb or short story. My mother quest or a questioning, without the “instructional” aspect kept a journal most of her adult life and wrote songs whenever inherent to the delivery of “messages” or the expectation of her five children and work outside the home allowed her the specific reactions from the viewer or the art critic. I am often time to write. One of my younger brothers and I used to collect amazed by viewers’ level of engagement and interaction with silk worms like lots of Tunisian kids at the time. We also my work and the extent of their interpretations of it. This collected proverbs. In both elementary and secondary school I dynamism is always very exciting for me because it means that used to write essays in Arabic and French to impress my both the artist and the viewer are engaged in the explorations teachers so as to compensate for the nightmarish grades I had and questioning in a given art piece. in math. In the corridors of 1970’s Ibn Rachiq Art Center, on My work’s development relies on a multidisciplinary art the way to our puppet theatre studio or on brakes from it, a few practice especially focused on visual or written poetry. I’m always in conversation with family, friends and colleagues from of my fellow marionettes and I used to recite our poems to each other, sometimes as we swapped sandwiches or the artists’ universal tribe, living or long deceased. And I am complaints about this or that art mentor. In the organization always in conversation with nature. Sometimes this is when Nationale de Theatre de Marionnettes we collectively adapted verb-poetry takes precedence over self-expression in the visual. Tunisian literary texts into the plays we created and presented.

Turns of noReturns. Watercolor, gouache, pencil, ink. 41x27

“In this painting I explore some of the emotional distances that distinguish expression from the absence of expression.” Rajaa A. Gharbi

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BIRDNESTBIMONTHLY June 10, 2009

Praesent malesuada. bibendum. Donec feugiat tempor libero. Nam uut, massa. Maecenas vitae ante et lacus aliquam hendrerit. Curabitur nunc eros, euismod in, convallis at, vehicula sed consectetuer posuere, eros mauris dignissim diam, pretium sed pede suscipit: Adiam condimentum purus, in consectetuer Proin in sapien. Fusce urna magna,neque eget lacus. Maecenas felis nunc, aliquam ac, consequat vitae, feugiat at, blandit vitae, euismod vel, nunc. Aenean ut erat ut nibh commodo suscipit. Now that was the era when Poetsinger Idir was taking a whole young generation of North Africans by surprise with his musical poem A VAVA INOUVA, and Ali Ben Ayad’s phenomenal Arabic language performances of Othello and other Shakespearian characters almost convinced us younger artists that Shakespeare didn’t write in English, and may be after all, his name was Sheikh Zobeir... Directly or indirectly, language has always been a window into my own world, other worlds, other histories, other arts. During the five years I lived in Fez, Arabic, French literature, and linguistics were very present in my life. I continued to write poems, started matching Tunisian proverbs with their Moroccan equivalent and that type of thing.

A notebook is much easier to carry than a 40x45canvas but the linguistics of painting is much more resistant to censorship and self-censorship than the written word. Every artist needs a spiritual taboula rasa when they start their work which, for me, is much easier to find when I’m painting.

cerebral expression. However, it is a construction of its own kind with specific language, technical skills and tools, and the requirement of at least some understanding of the artistic context informing or not informing the art/ poetry that’s being created. Both subject matter and form get more defined as the painting progresses, and once the painting starts to talk, if you will, I will interact with it regardless of how long it will take to complete it. Sometimes you will see miniature narratives and visual conversations within the large narrative of the same painting. Sometimes the painting is kept to a visual proverb. A few examples of this that you can see in my website are Luminary Visitors and Worship or Self-Annihilation.

3- As far as I am concerned, most activities that the artist has to engage in that do not nurture the artist’s development and help her or him achieve artistic distinctiveness are “business activities”. There is always a stylistic thread that runs through both my visual artwork and my poems, but if the images I create start looking similar I’d stop painting. I can’t follow “art” trends or create work for a specific market. Art is often the questioning and reconsideration of pre-determined perimeters. A 20th century Tunisian example of a painter who painstakingly When you start a painting, do you achieved great distinctiveness is Ostadh Then, in 1982, my first year in the have a clear idea of the outcome or Ammar Farhat. He ignored all sorts of USA I experienced some unwanted and do you just go with the flow? In trends, transcending thematic and certain unnecessary silence like never before. I stylistic norms of his time (Imagine other words, how much do you had an immediate allergy to the personal “improvise”? having a retrospective exhibit of his work and social effects of the nuclear family, When I start working on a painting I in the United States!). Gaudi’s and the complete absence of clearly architectural genius and legacy are largely seldom have a clear idea of what that visible and accessible artistic and cultural painting will look like when it’s finished. due to his courage to reconsider all references as I knew them, including Usually there is a sort of gestation period aspects of the established architectural literal and artistic multilingualism. I norms of his time and region. So the I mostly feel viscerally at first, before I thought that was a form of torture and artwork is a process of “invention” not begin painting. I work intuitively, and felt an urgent need to write every day, at the re-production of invention. Having every visual phrase leads me -sometimes first to keep my emotional and intellectual by the nose- to a new visual phrase. But I said all this, artists are people with regular sanity (I’m not sure these two things can material needs like every body else. For use the improvisational effect of paint as be separated). I also felt that I had to particular Oud or Jazz piano players refer certain artists in the US any way, create some kind of reference point for Institutional funding can be thematically or allude to established musical modes, my daughter. In the process of learning but trust their own passion for innovation, and formally extremely conditional.If the how to do that I really took to the English or at least a re-interpretation of what’s artist wants to maintain artistic freedom language, fell in love with the mountains and doesn’t have serious collectors or already there. and forests of this Northwest and met other patrons who believe in his/her several greatly spirited US poets. work, they will reserve part of their For me a painting is a multilayered creative time for business. But they won’t visual poem. And poetry, be it visual or I have kept paper and pen readily made of words or something else, is not a succumb to anything that might eat the available at all times since I moved here. soul out their art.

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BIRDNESTBIMONTHLY June 10, 2009

“[Her work is] a major visual power... “Gharbi embodies the natural charisma of a descendent from an older culture... I have to remember how physical her work is ...it has grown into a complex combination of “free hand and the search of what’s to be left behind that which represents “the making impulse”...the work is unkempt, gestural, lingual, and as she said at one of her readings “...edited almost out of sight”. I referred to her show “Images, Scripts and Diacritical Signs” with a friend of Gharbi’s, “the collected power of her work is a stain that leaves the page and enters your chest”. That was the remark that reminded me that the need to make sense of complex mass takes time but it comes.” Jon Gierlich. Artist, Design professor, Cornish Art Institute

In “Listening to Anwar Brahem” how did you translate the sound on the CD to the silence on the canvas? Was the musical piece that inspired you actually that blue? Yes it was. When I was listening to the tune I was sort of hearing its musical phrases with my ears and my eyes. I was seeing dance, flight, ethereal costumes, and actors careening on and off cloud-like stages or diving into unseen spaces. The painting has palette nuances of blue, violet and ebony black that merge into radiant silver spaces. They don’t come through in the Internet digital copy of the painting that you saw. The large fluid “dancers” and the blue of oceans and the sky are visible but not the details of jeweled and feathered crowns or the smaller bird/ acrobats. The quarter-notes of the pigment, so to speak, are visible in the original work. Viewers have described some of my paintings as having an auditory quality 5-You lived in Morocco, Spain, France, the US and Tunisia. How important was depicting your identity in your art (paintings/poems)? And if you could sum up each of these countries in one word, what would they be? I’m very careful around the term identity because of its implicit false sense of absoluteness and impermeability. I think

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that culture and identity are dynamic. They are the way we do every thing every day, and most of us reinvigorate, or at least influence other people’s “identity” as much as they do ours. What did Italian born artist Joseph Stella (1877-1946) or Polish born artist Irving Norman (1906–1989) give to American art and what did the US give to their art? May be a sincere look into the construction of an identity? I can’t imagine Ezzeddine Elmadani, Ali ben Ayyyad, Soprano Jessye Norman, or Fieda Khalo approaching their daily art work with the anxieties of having to depict or somehow state their identity in their work. As far as I could tell they did not perform their overall artistic or “ethnic identity”. They embodied it. Perhaps you were alluding in your question to the fact that almost at all levels of social interaction many peoples are often expected to perform their “cultural heritage/identity”, prove their humanism or humanity. The universal questions on the meaning of life, justice, beauty, and the way artists try to share these questions with the rest of society are work enough. I don’t think I can sum up one single neighborhood in one word

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BIRDNESTBIMONTHLY June 10, 2009

Tell us more about your upcoming exhibition “Collective Psyches” due in 2009?

Tunisia, where can they be directed to?

For now all I can say about it is that it’s a visual exploration of collective psyches, larger in scale than my earlier paintings, and done in mixed water based acrylic on canvas and paper.

They can begin at http:// www.rajaagharbi.com, or visit GHAYYA Studio in Seattle Washington. An exhibition of new works (2007-2008) will be held there in December of 2008. For Tunis, perhaps some one in the ministry of culture can better answer your question. I’m not sure

What do you have to say to your female Tunisian readers? Why just female Tunisian readers? I hope you can laugh at my joke. I don’t write looking at a photo of my ovaries. I write from the heart, experience, and usually after long stretches of analytical work. I do not write or paint to answer the demands of the day, but to look into the past in case I can unearth a forgotten or obscured vision or two, point to purity of emotion in the present and nurture independence of the intellect. The quest for truth and beauty has been the work of women and men too. I just do mine in English and in my personal style. I don’t know how many of us know that our beloved Taher Haddad played the Oud, wrote songs and poems and had extremely loyal friends who helped him in his time of adversity. I want to explore this side of his legacy.

For those interested in seeing your art on display either in the US or

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“Highly evolved work” You’re now living in the West coast far from the culturally vibrant North-East Coast, why Seattle in particular?

Michael Kline, curator Microsoft International Art Collection

“Gharbi’s work integrates themes of life, death, relationships and her cultural roots in a unique form of visual poetry, her ability to show these human themes so powerfully through her strong and affective use of poetry woven through her paintings with the Arabic and other scripts, and her vivid use of colors and images touched me deeply. She brings a perspective that is frequently unseen or heard in this part of the world—that from an accomplished writer and artist, who is a woman, from North Africa (Tunisia) and a Muslim Background... These paintings are such a treat to the eye and soul. I could look at them forever”

It takes only a few hours’ drive to heaven here- The forests are paradise wrapped in green lace, the mountains’ might and the air are really addictive, and I started a few things in the arts here since 1986 that I would be ashamed to abandon now. The work I do is in part an interaction with and reaction to manifestations of truth and beauty, and what obscures or overshadows them. My work is also a celebration of life and the search for what might help us keep spring when we have it or dream it up when we don’t. These manifestations change faces and degrees in different places but they are everywhere and I have no choice but to take myself with me wherever I live. So Patti Bezzo, Artist my celebration of life and my work continue anywhere I live. consumption but my basket will sure help me reduce it.

le couffin (fr), the basket (en)

That’s it! Next time, I am taking my Tunisian basket! Each week, while doing my groceries at a Montreal supermarket, I realize that despite my efforts to reduce the use of plastic bags -and packaging in general- I always end up having too many! Vegetables and fruits are separately packed in small plastic bags, cheeses and meat come in expanded polystyrene plates covered with polyolefin film, olives and other condiments packed in small rigid plastic boxes…Even bread sometimes comes in a plastic bag! This trend is present in all developed countries and is starting its way in Tunisia especially with the newly introduced giant supermarkets. It is true that a majority of this packaging is recyclable and is usually useful to keep products fresh. But sometimes, its convenience stops at carrying goods, such as for vegetables. Thus, I am determined! As of this week, my Tunisian basket is heading to Montreal’s supermarkets and markets. I do realize that I won’t be able to avoid all the weekly plastic

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Whether manufactured in Nabeul, Gabes or elsewhere, the Tunisian basket is definitely one of the most ecological means to carry groceries. Not only, it is made of natural products, it is reusable, and it reflects a Tunisian know-how. I therefore invite all Tunisians living in Tunisia or elsewhere and non-Tunisians as well-, to get a basket! Not only is it ecological but it can also help you make new friends. There will be somebody one day, asking you “Where did you buy this beautiful basket?”

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BIRDNEST MONTHLY June 10, 2009

In an era of unfettered markets Opinion By Amine Allam, Tunisian Fullbright, Rochester University, New York.

The prominence of a nation can be measured using a wide set of criteria including Gross Domestic Product, the number of Nobel prizes, the number of gold medals it earns in the Olympic games or even internationally acclaimed artists or bestselling authors to name a few. In a globalized world where managerial talent is becoming commoditized, the number of world class business leaders a nation produces is indeed a measure of its integration in the global economy and overall international profile. This article is an anecdotal account of how different countries have done in producing world class managerial talent. When it comes to Arab countries, the Lebanese are the absolute winners. The Lebanese are widely known for their innate business acumen and entrepreneurial sense. The same pursuit of business opportunities that took the Phoenicians to Carthage almost three thousand years ago took the Lebanese to virtually every country in the world. They have a significant presence across all sectors in Latin America and the US; they are in international trade in Asia and in the Petrol industry in Africa. As a result, the Lebanese can claim a decent number of world class business leaders. Perhaps the most famous of whom is Carlos Ghosn the CEO of Renault-Nissan who achieved a corporate hero status during his tenure at Nissan in Japan. Another famous Lebanese is Selim Helu who is the second richest man in the world, who built his empire from scratch and who gained his prominence in the telecom sector in Latin America. Jacques Nasser, born in Lebanon in 1947 served as CEO of the Ford Motor Company from 1999 to 2001. My favorite yet is John Mack

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(nicknamed Mack the knife), CEO of Morgan Stanley, one of the largest Wall Street firms and Co-CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston between 2002 and 2004. Other noteworthy countries in this area are India and Pakistan. Indians and Pakistani represent a significant population of the MBA students at Ivy League schools and represent a significant percentage of each Associate class that Wall Street hires. Most famous leaders include the recently appointed CEO of Citi, Vikram Pandit or Moeen Qureshi, ex-CFO of the World Bank, exinterim prime minister of Pakistan and currently Chairman of private equity firm EMP.

While we might be optimistic and wait for the current generation of Grandes Ecoles graduates to make its way to the top jobs at CAC-40 companies, the picture doesn’t look promising when we consider fortune 500 companies and Wall Street firms either. There might be a few potential leaders down the pipeline though but we will need to wait for a decade or two. During my own quest for a job at Wall Street, I actively tried to track down Tunisian bankers in New York. After some research, I found out that there are no more than a dozen Tunisians at Wall Street, most of them are from IHEC Carthage (my undergraduate school) and many of them did part of their education in Canada before landing a job in Wall Street. Perhaps the most troubling observation is that we are far from being aware of our absence from the AngloSaxon educational system and from leadership positions in multinationals. In fact we are moving in the opposite direction. Scholarships to the US were discontinued in the mid 90's and scholarships to Canada were suspended in the late 90's. In contrast, Pakistan agreed to contribute more funds to the US-based Fulbright scholarship in order to increase the number of Pakistani scholars to 200 per year, the majority of which end up in Ivy League schools (compare to only six or seven Tunisian scholars per year, all fields included). In addition, although Tunisian purchasing power is 5 to 10 times higher than the Chinese or the Indian, very few Tunisians are taking the risk of financing graduate school in the US or the UK through a loan with the intention of repaying it after getting a job.

So where do Tunisians stand in the picture? Unfortunately we do not rank very high. Tunisian “international presence” is still heavily limited to France. Although Tunisians made good headways in French Grandes Ecoles and are being hired by top industrial and consulting firms, to my knowledge, there is no single CEO in the CAC-40 who is of a Tunisian descent.

In conclusion, there is a lot of ground work to be done to educate Tunisians on how to access world-class education but also how to move up the corporate ladder in corporations and institutions that literally “govern” the world. This will be an essential step towards speeding up Tunisia's development process and boosting its international profile.

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