In this painting, I capture a moment of intimacy that brings together a matriarch, her daughter and her child. The scene, which is inspired by the universe of Lucien Freud, expresses maternal love through the choice of earth tones that recall the origin, the fusional relationship between the characters. The painting not only traces the passage of time but also describes, through its composition, a relationship of filiation where everyone clings to their offspring. But from this maternal love comes anxiety, the fear of emptiness and that of abandonment. Besides, who says that a mother's love is always serene.

This series, painted between 2015 and 2022, marks an inward turning.
After the landscapes of childhood and the murmuring sea, I moved toward the body — the body as territory, as archive, as fracture.

During my time in Tehran, something in my painting grew denser. Faces became more frontal, flesh heavier, gazes more insistent. I painted men and women encountered in passing, figures shaped by the street, presences born of my own origins — silhouettes bearing history, fatigue, endurance, and quiet dignity.

From Francis Bacon, I absorbed a certain tension of the body — that subtle distortion that reveals vulnerability beneath composure.
From Lucian Freud, the patience of matter, the obstinacy of paint, the uncompromising truth of skin.
From Alice Neel, the psychological directness: to paint someone is to endure their gaze.

Yet these works are not quotations. They are threaded with my own fault lines — my Tunisian roots, my crossings between shores, my encounters in Tehran’s streets, markets, interiors heavy with silence, and fragmented conversations.

The carpet seller, the weathered faces of time, motherhood, the sleeper, Bou Saâdiya, the wave, the Yazdi, the child by the sea, the taxiphone — each figure carries an intimate geography.
Each canvas attempts to hold together Mediterranean memory, Persian light, and the quiet displacement of the in-between.

In this collection, the paint thickens, colors deepen into earth and rust, contrasts sharpen.
I no longer search for the diffuse light of remembrance; I search for presence.

Painting becomes an act of recognition.
To recognize the other.
To recognize, within them, something of myself.