The Aesthetics of Hospitality

Thursday, June 22, 2023, at 5 p.m.

ISBAS (Higher Institute of Fine Arts of Sousse), Tunisia

This convivial gathering around a large shared meal is dedicated to welcoming the Biennale de Paris to Tunisia, planned for 2024.

The gathering is organised by artist Yosr Mahmoud as an expression of her “aesthetics of hospitality”.

The aesthetics of hospitality transcends the artwork, asserting itself as a gesture of invisual art. This gesture manifests itself through the harmony between openness to the Other and the exploration of the artist’s genealogical identity. It draws on the virtues of an ancestral heritage.

In Sublime parole, Maurice Blanchot writes that “hospitality consists less in feeding the guest than in restoring their appetite by bringing them back to the level of need, to a life in which one can say and bear to hear: And now, let us not forget to eat”.

Rooted in a spirit of welcome and warmth, the artist’s reflection on hospitality emphasises the importance of restoring the guest’s appetite by reconnecting them with a fundamental need. This approach highlights the deeper meaning of hospitality, which goes beyond a simple moral duty to become a profoundly human way of acting.

The artist relinquishes any claim to act as a lawgiver, while bringing ethics and aesthetics together through the aesthetics of hospitality.

Partner: Pâtisserie Lawahedh