After Totality

Artists

Monia Ben Hamouda

Press release

In her upcoming exhibition at ChertLüdde, Monia Ben Hamouda presents After Totality. The title refers to her recent exhibition Path of Totality, shown at Museo Casa Rusca, Locarno (20 September 2025 – 11 January 2026). In astronomy, the “path of totality” denotes the area of the Earth from which a total solar eclipse is visible, when the moon fully obscures the sun and daylight briefly gives way to darkness. For Ben Hamouda, the phenomenon becomes a metaphor for the present moment, overshadowed by war, an escalating climate crisis, and the resurgence of fascist and racist ideologies. After Totality thus points to a fragile threshold: the uncertain, tentative possibility of emergence after darkness. Over the past few years, Tunisian-Italian artist Monia Ben Hamouda (born 1991 in Milan, Italy) has developed a distinctive artistic universe, presenting her work in major international exhibitions, most recently the 14th Taipei Biennial. Moving fluidly between abstraction and figuration, her practice weaves together Islamic and Western cultural lineages. Using spices associated with medicine, cooking, and ritual across North Africa as a protective gesture, Ben Hamouda translates Islamic architectural forms and ornamental traditions into spatial installations, shaping a distinctly personal artistic vision. Ben Hamouda situates both her practice and her position as an artist in close dialogue with the political realities of the present. At ChertLüdde, she presents a ruin-like structure composed of salvaged wood that bisects two gallery rooms. Horizontally stacked beams are layered around deterritorialized arches created by the artist, evoking the shifting social imprint of the Arab world. An overwhelming fragrance rises from a dense layer of red-orange spices spread across the sculpture, forming a protective veil over the ogee arches and other architectural elements embedded within the structure. Titled Reversion (Wudu Diorama) (2022-2026), the work reflects on the connections between architectural ruin and notions of physical and spiritual protection. With ‘Wudu’ referring to the ritual absolution that is practiced before prayer or before reading the Qur’an, the installation visually demonstrates a collapse while situating it within broader systems of destruction that have shaped real civilizations. Presented in Germany for the first time, the exhibition highlights the erosion of cultural foundations and bases of discourse in the face of prevailing socio-political shifts. With this project, Ben Hamouda continues her investigation, bringing to the surface the confrontation between different perspectives in the contemporary European context. Similar iterations of the installation have been presented at Centre d’art contemporain Museo Casa Rusca, Locarno (20 September 2025 – 11 January 2026) and Lower Cavity, Holyoke (18 June – 8 July 2022). Monia Ben Hamouda (1991, Milan, Italy) lives and works between al-Qayrawan (Tunisia) and Milan. She graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan. Her artistic practice reflects the complexity of her intercultural identity. Drawing inspiration from her Italian and Tunisian roots and cultural syncretism, Ben Hamouda reinvents established aesthetic canons through a process of sign contamination. Selected solo exhibitions include: Museo Casa Rusca in Locarno (2025); La Ferme du Buisson in Paris (2025); MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome (2024); MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome; Swiss Institute in Milan (2024); Casa Encendida, Madrid (2023). Selected group exhibitions include: the Taipei Biennial (2025); MUDEC – Museum of Cultures, Milan (2024); Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga (2024); Heidelberger Kunstverein, Heidelberg (2024); MUSEION Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Bolzano (2024); Kunsthalle Wien, Wien (2023); Frac Bretagne, Rennes (2023); Kunsthalle Mainz, Mainz (2023); MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, Rome (2023).