August 13 (2025) is part of Featuring…, a series of collaborations, performances, and installations that stems from a profound belief that every human is inherently creative.
In 2024 Nadia Kaabi-Linke travelled to Tunis at the invitation of the exhibition space LA BOÎTE, not simply as a visitor, but as a local participant. The project redefines the roles within the art field, shifting the dynamic between viewers and artists. In her opinion, one of the distinction between artists and non-artists lies in memory: artists preserve the creativity they discovered in childhood, while others may forget, persuaded by the illusion that they lack talent. Featuring… is not a traditional artist’s journey, but a radically conceptual work about authorship, identity, and creativity.
In this project, Nadia Kaabi-Linke took on the role as co-creator and performer of Abir Ben Ali artistic idea.
August 13 takes its starting point from a significant moment in Tunisian history. On 13 August 1956, Tunisia enacted its Personal Status Code (مجلة الأحوال الشخصية) a landmark reform that abolished polygamy, established mutual consent for marriage, legalised judicial divorce, and promised expanded rights for women in work, family, and society. It remains one of the Arab-Muslim world’s most progressive legal achievements.
But Abir Ben Ali questions what kind of emancipation this truly is. She speaks of a freedom bound by invisible chains, because tradition hasn’t actually changed. It is still a woman’s role to take sole responsibility for the home and children—only now, her professional life is added on top of these duties.
Today, a woman may work, earn, and choose her path, yet she still bears the weight of domestic labor, childcare, and emotional care. It’s a system that exhausts under the appearance of liberation. She asks: What if it was better before, when the labor of care was at least acknowledged—rather than hidden beneath the illusion of freedom?
In our collaboration, I embody this paradox inside a box. A male hand—symbolizing the authority that defines personal codes of conduct—gently drops fresh green leaves onto me for three hours. The leaves, representing newly acquired freedom, feel beautiful and light at first, as I read and listen to music. But as they turn brown and begin to pile up, that beauty becomes suffocating, and I slowly disappear beneath it.
