Asameena is an experimental literary collective backed by an annual publication, whose objective is to invite authors to participate in a literary space in the making, which includes writing, publishing one thematic issue per year, but also hosting writing workshops, public readings and meetings. The collective behind the journal is a group of Moroccan and Tunisian authors who met in France in 2012, and who together founded the publishing platform www.asameena.co, online in 2016. Three founding members of the collective, Kaoutar Chaqchaq, Malek Lakhal, and Myriam Amri, decided to formulate a call to write in April 2022 to 15 female authors to initiate the print version of Asameena magazine. The theme chosen for the first issue is “anger”. It is published by Éditions Atonales.

Leila Bencharnia (MA / IT)

In her already existing acousmatic performance Bencharnia explores how acoustic movements have a determining role in the dialogue between sound and the sensorial, she invites the part-takers of her work to let the sound touch and traverse their bodies furthering deep forms of listening. The daughter of a traditional Moroccan musician, her dialogue with sound begins in the western desert of Morocco, where she was born. In 2013, she moved to Milan where she began musical research through analog material (vinyl, tapes, cassettes) that lead her to experiment with forms of sound narrative in dialogue with experimental electronic music.

Monia Ben Hamadi (TN)

Journalist and consultant, former editorial director of inkyfada, founding member of Huffington Post Maghreb.

Sara Bouzagarrou (TN)

Sara Bouzgarrou is a Tunisian publisher/printmaker, illustrator and cultural events coordinator. She is interested in the intersection between print, food-studies and feminist issues through her interdisciplinary approach.

She graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Tunis.

In 2017, she founded LE 5015, a small press risography studio, and then the collective Athropollo 13, a publishing project combining comics and anthropological research that attempts to document field explorations and scientific texts using new narrative forms.

Kaouter Chaqchaq (MA)

Born in Tangier, Morocco in 1994, Kaoutar Chaqchaq is an author. She is also a doctoral student in sociology of literature at the University of Paris VIII since January 2022.

She has been interested in the Moroccan literary scene since the late 1990s, and in particular, in the constraints that frame the aesthetic strategies of writers of fictional novels, and in the forms that their figurations of reality take, in a postcolonial context.

In 2016, she founded, with Malek Lakhal (politician and writer, Tunisia) and Myriam Amri (anthropologist, Tunisia) the literary collective Asameena

Sofia Fahli (MA)

Sofia Fahli is a Moroccan graphic designer, art director and producer. Her plastic practice revolves around the book and sound. She works on alternative editorial objects, rhythm and its visual representations. After studying graphic design, she obtained a research degree in publishing new forms. She founded a Moroccan publishing house called Atonale. Atonale is a publishing house that questions new forms of publishing and distribution. The formats are often alternative, both in content and in physical form. Formerly responsible for the graphic design course at the design school of casa, she teaches mainly typography and publishing.

In the musical field she produces new wave in Arabic under the name of Gaouta and she is the drummer of several music bands.

Aziza Gorgi (TN)

Aziza Gorgi is an artist, illustrator, and artistic director. She graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Tunis with a degree in Interior Design. After working with several creative studios, Aziza began to question the place of design in everyday life in the Tunisian social context. Her practice is multidisciplinary as she works at the intersection of sculpture, design, printmaking, and so-called “craft”. Researching local manual design techniques and industrial ones, she creates objects and installations that reflect on the evolution of crafts in Tunisia but also challenge the commonly accepted understandings of the “decorative”.

Aziza Harmel (TN)

Aziza Harmel (born 1985 in Tunis) is an independent curator. Aziza has worked at Documenta 14, Steirischer Herbst and most recently at Kunsthalle Wien. She co-curated the 12th edition of the Bamako Encounters: Biennale of African Photography in Mali (2019-2020). She also co-curated an exhibition titled Do Nothing, Feel Everything at Kunsthalle Wien (2022) which looked into art practices that understand insanity as a common condition and as a dynamic form of knowledge. She is currently curating Hosting Lands in Denmark with the Laboratory for Ecology and Aesthetics and the Forrest Curriculum. Hosting Lands focuses on Land rights and issues of access, use, possession and occupation of land.

Rehab Hazgui (TN)

Rehab Hazgui is a Tunisian modular synthesis performer and composer of electronic music. Using the analog synthesizer and handmade audio devices, she explores the endless movement of sound, repetition, and the use of silence as a third space on the boundary to navigate between different forms of listening. Through immersive live improvisation, Rehab interacts with her synthesizers, guiding their development and growth into pieces that unfold in the present moment. Rehab Hazgui’s work has been presented in many festivals and venues: Phonetics (Algiers), CTM (Berlin), Kikk (Namur, Belgium), Savvy Contemporary (Berlin), Phonetics (Saint-Denis, Paris), Perte de Signal (Montreal), Sight&Sound (Montreal), The Mannheimer Sommer Festival (Mannheim, Germany).

Salma Kossemtini (TN)

Salma Kossemtini is a curator with a background in interior design. Her interest is rooted in contemporary art, sensory experience and their socio-cultural impact. She has been engaged in curatorial practice since 2016 in various local and international art in public space festivals. She’s an alumnus of Tasawar Curatorial Studios and a MA student in art theory. Her thesis is rooted in decolonial perspectives on the contemporary Art Practices of Dalila Mahdjoub, Nidhal Chamekh and Kader Attia. Since 2021, Salma has curated several notable exhibitions such as “KOFF,” a video art section dedicated to young Tunisian artists that explored the medium of video through featured artworks. She also curated “On a Blade of Grass,” a solo show of Fares Thabet at the Selma Feriani Gallery – Tunis, “Over The Edge” solo show of Thameur Mejri, at the Selma Feriani Gallery Cromwell Place – London, “L’atelier, a group show” in the studio space of Selma Feriani Gallery and co-curated with Kenza Jemmali “KOFF x Dream City” as part of Dream City Festival 2022. Currently, Salma works as a Curator at the Selma Feriani Gallery, managing the Atelier (the studio space) and as a production assistant at the 32Bis a Contemporary Art Space in downtown Tunis.

Malek Lakhal (TN)

Malek Lakhal is a writer and researcher. She is the co-founder of the literary magazine Asameena, where she has written fiction, essays, and poetry. Her first novel, Valse des Silences was published in May 2022 at Editions JC Lattès. 

Soumaya Mestiri (TN)

Soumaya Mestiri is a professor of political and social philosophy at the University of Tunis. She is a visiting professor at Sciences Po Paris (Menton Campus) since 2021 where she teaches a course titled “Arab Feminism in MENA”. Her work focuses on theories of justice, liberalism but also on women’s issues related to post and decolonial thought.

Her latest publications include Decolonizing feminism. A transcultural approach, Paris, Vrin, 2016, and Elucidating intersectionality; the reasons for black feminism, Paris, Vrin, 2020.

Jamina Metwaly (EG / PL)

Jasmina Metwaly is a visual artist and filmmaker based in Cairo. She studied painting in Poznan where she focused on time-based works with strong correlations to painting. She is co-founder of 8784 h project. Following the revolution that ousted President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, Metwaly was a founding member of the video and social-media collective Mosireen and collaborated with the filmmaker Philip Rizk, promoting video activism and “document unrest”. More recently, she has spent time in the studio and in residency in Italy, reflecting on the tumultuous past with a renewed focus on artistic practice and its specific audience. She is interested in the points of intersection/division between single-channel image, video and documentary filmmaking. Metwaly’s work has been exhibited locally and at international art venues and festivals including Townhouse Gallery, Cairo; 7th Berlin Biennale, Berlin; Forum Expanded Berlinale Film Festival 2014, Berlin; International Film Festival Rotterdam 2012, Rotterdam; Kings Gate, London; Virtual Museum, CASZuidas, Amsterdam, BWA, Wroclaw; amongst others.

Kamila Metwaly (EG / PL)

Kamila Metwaly is a music journalist, electronic musician, and curator based between Berlin and Cairo. She is the artistic director of the MaerzMusik festival for contemporary sound and music. Her practice engages with various formats weaving performative and installative tools to expand and re-engage with non-dominant and non-normative music and sound histories and cultures. In 2021, she has been appointed as a guest research curator for Donaueschingen. Metwaly has worked on various exhibition and performances projects, including: “What Has All This Got To Do With Coconuts And Rice: A Listening Exhibition on José Maceda” (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2017), “We Have Delivered Ourselves from the Tonal: Of, with, towards, on Julius Eastman” (SAVVY Contemporary/MaerzMusik – Festival for Time Issues, Berlin, 2018), “The Dog Done Gone Deaf: Exploring the Sonic Cosmologies of Halim El-Dabh” with Bonaventure Ndikung (Dak’Art Biennale, Senegal, 2018), and “Here History Began: Tracing the Re/Verberations of Halim El-Dabh” (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, 2020–2021). 

Alia Sellami (TN)

A multifaceted artist, Alia Sellami combines lyrical, contemporary, jazz and Arabic singing with the same mastery. By way of passion, contemporary music and improvisation have become a practice in experimental and multidisciplinary shows with artists such as Silvain Kassap, Médéric Collignon or Israël Galvan. Creator and performer of her own concert-performances (“Operator”, Marseille Capitale Culturelle 2013; Dream City festival, Tunis 2007, 2010, 2012; “Une révélation”, Miniatures project, Italy, Morocco, France; “L’Autre et moi”, MUCEM 2015; etc.), she also composes for theater, dance and cinema as well as for various ensembles (“Mur Murs de la ville”, for the choir Les éléments, France, Tunisia 2014, and “Ventilation” for the quintet Concert impromptu, France, Tunisia). Landmarks: “L’Adieu de l’hôtesse arabe”, CD of orientalist melodies, France 2004. “Nafass”, concert CD of sacred songs of the world, Tunis 2010. “La fiesta” by Israel Galvan, Avignon Festival, ARTE live, July 2017. Alia Sellami teaches vocal technique at the University of Tunis since 2006. She is awarded the National Order of Cultural Merit of Tunisia.