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
Nidhal Chamekh © Adagp 2024