Et si Carthage #1. 2024
Ink, graphite and transfer on paper, scaffolding
200h x 250w cm
Et si Carthage #1. 2024
Detail.
Et si Carthage #2. 2024
Ink, graphite and transfer on paper, scaffolding 200h x 250w cm
Et si Carthage #2. 2024
Detail.
Et si Carthage #3. 2024
Ink, graphite and transfer on paper, scaffolding 200h x 250w cm
Et si Carthage #3. 2024
Detail.
Et si Carthage #4. 2024
Ink, graphite and transfer on paper, scaffolding 200h x 250w cm
Et si Carthage #5. 2024
Ink, graphite and transfer on paper, scaffolding 200h x 250w cm
Et si Carthage #5. 2024
Detail.
Et si Carthage #6. 2024
Ink, graphite and transfer on paper, scaffolding 200h x 250w cm
Et si Carthage #6. 2024
Detail.
In
his first large drawing from the series et si Carthage? (2023),
Chamekh brings together cultural difference. In Chamekh’s research
underlying this body of work, he was interested in making visible the
ancient influences of North Africa on Roman antiquity. Figures such as the
horned deity Ammon draw together Berber, Phoenician, Egyptian and Roman gods.
Carthage was crushed by Rome, yet subsequently the province of Africa
Romana became very important in Roman trade, culture and indeed politics, notably
through the African Emperor Septimius Severus and his dynasty. Roman rule
worked to integrate the best of what was found in the provinces; Chamekh
underlines how Carthage itself persists in Rome and elsewhere through a
plethora of cultural and iconographic influences.
Chamekh
reminds us that the resilience of the Punic metropolis, of which it is said
that the very earth was salted by the Roman troops so that it might never
rise again, can also be read in the eyes of the vanquished and
exiled. Today it can be seen in the determination of all those who, in crossing the Mediterranean, rebel against the
structural mechanisms of the globalised economy, developed across long periods
of imperial domination and colonial extraction to concentrate wealth in
the hands of the northern few.
From the curatorial text by Kathryn Weir for the exhibition What if Carthage