les Musées de Marseille: Tatouage: Histoires de la Méditerrané
Photographs by Algerian photographer Lazhar Mansouri, on loan from Westwood Gallery NYC are presented in an exhibition by Les Musées de Marseille. Tatouage: Histoires de la Méditerranée explores the art and practices of tattooing from Antiquity to contemporary culture in the Mediterranean region.
Mansouri’s photographs capture the fading tradition and history of face tattooing among Amazigh (Berber) women. The studio portraits on view in Marseille were taken from approximately the 1950s to 1970s at Mansouri's studio in Aïn Beïda, Algeria.
Musées de Marseille (Translated from French):
From its earliest traces found in Egypt, Syria, and the Cyclades, and later in Greece, tattooing in the Mediterranean has evolved through the ages, adapting to medical, religious, political, and aesthetic uses, to become, with the advent of modernity, a fully-fledged art form fueled by pop culture. The exhibition traces this evolution, from ancient tattooing to its current influences, particularly in Marseille, where it has also become an expression of the city's identity.
From Italy to Algeria, from the Balkans to Iran, from Spain to Cyprus, this project draws on the methodologies of global art history, encompassing the complex geographies of the Mediterranean, as well as gender studies and postcolonial research. It offers a fresh perspective on this space, marked by the porous nature of its borders and the multiple religious, commercial, artistic, and cultural exchanges that have shaped it over time.
Paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos, fashion, and everyday objects punctuate the exhibition, blending insights from history, art history, archaeology, ethnology, and anthropology. The exhibition also explores contemporary Marseilles-based tattooing and its place within the pop culture imagination.
Extending research initiated in 2023 as part of the exhibition"Baya. An Algerian heroine of modern art"The exhibition also gives a central place to artists from around the Mediterranean who drew on tattoo motifs for a formal repertoire that nourished the avant-garde as well as the feminist and decolonial movements of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Iran.
Unpublished works by personalities such as Choukri Mesli, Samta Benyahia, Farid Belkahia, Lalla Essaydi or El Meya will be presented to the public, alongside in particular two drawings by the artist Ahmed Cherkaoui made in 1967 and acquired by the City of Marseille in 2024.
The exhibition will also feature a previously unseen work by the Algerian artist Denis Martinez, created specifically for this exhibition at the Centre de la Vieille Charité. One of the founders of the avant-garde group Aouchem (literally "Tattoos") in the mid-1960s, he now lives between Blida and Marseille.
In exceptional partnership with the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, the exhibition Tattooing. Stories of the Mediterranean benefits from significant loans from national and international institutions, such as the Louvre Museum, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, the Centre national des arts plastiques, the Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia in Rome, the Musei Civici in Pavia, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale e Castello di Manfredonia, the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, the Glyptohtek in Munich, the Museo arqueolégéco nacional in Madrid, and the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam, in dialogue with the heritage collections held by the network of Museums of Marseille.
