Stepping Down to the Top

Collaboration with Raouf Hamouda

Tunis, TN
2025

The project explores the monotony of existence through a minimalist staircase that functions as a symbol of a closed loop—an ongoing cycle with no clear exit. Reduced to its bare essentials, the staircase becomes a visual metaphor for repetition: ascending, descending, and returning to the same point, again and again. Its spare form heightens awareness of routine, wear, and the quiet pressure of time that accumulates through everyday movement.

Inspired by the second law of thermodynamics, the installation stages the concept of irreversibility—a one-way trajectory in which each step alters what comes next. Like entropy, the work suggests that life unfolds as a directional process that cannot be reversed or restored to an earlier state. The staircase operates as an experiential device—part architecture, part mental model—making perceptible the tension between the desire to return and the impossibility of “going back.” Moving between sculpture and conceptual installation, the project proposes a reflection on the human condition, repetition as structure, and time as a system that advances without rewind.

Media
Installation and sound

Exhibition
Featuring…

Duration
06/02/2025 – 11/04/2025 (extended)

Exhibited at
Featuring… ISAM Gabès, Tunisia
Featuring… La Boîte – Center for Art and Architecture, Tunis, Tunisia

 

Location
La Boîte | Centre de l’art contemporain, Tunis, Tunisia

Links
Nadia Kaabi-Linke speaking about Featuring:
Arabic version | English version
Featuring… Trailer produced by La Boîte
ISAM – Opening
Featuring… La Boîte – Opening
La Boîte’s Story Playlist on Instagram

A white room with an upside down staircase which ends on a mirror laying on the ground. On the ceiling, the staircase continues in the form of lights in the same size of the steps. On the left side, a glass wall gives view into a hallway.

Raouf Hamouda & Nadia Kaabi-Linke
Stepping Down to the Top, 2025

Media
Installation with sound

Exhibition views
Featuring…, 2025

©
Nadia Kaabi-Linke / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

©Photos
Mohammed Said