Nja Mahdaoui

Abstract

A major figure of modern Arab art, Nja Mahdaoui is an internationally renowned Tunisian visual artist and calligrapher, often described as a ‘choreographer of letters’. Trained at the Accademia di Sant'Andrea in Rome and the École du Louvre in Paris, he has played a pioneering role in the development of calligraphic abstraction. His singular approach consists of liberating the Arabic letter from its linguistic dimension, treating it as a purely visual and rhythmic sign, thereby creating an imaginary alphabet devoid of semantic content. His work spans over six decades and has explored an exceptional diversity of media—parchment, canvas, leather, metal, glass, textile, ceramics: it has been exhibited in many of the world's leading institutions. He received the Grand Prix des Arts et des Lettres of Tunisia in 2006 and the UNESCO Grand Prix for craftsmanship in the Arab world in 2005.

Biography

Social and Artistic Context

Nja Mahdaoui was born in Tunis in 1937, when Tunisia was still a French protectorate. His interest in forms and geometric patterns manifested itself from a very early age. He undertook artistic studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Tunis, then at the École Libre de Carthage, where he absorbed the fundamentals of visual creation. This initial academic training opened the doors to the European art scene, which he discovered during travels to France and Italy. He participated intensively in debates on the relationship between North African art and Western painting, advocating a renewed engagement with the visual and spiritual heritage of the Arab-Islamic world.

Educational Background and Artistic Career

Mahdaoui's career took a decisive turn in the 1960s. In 1965, he moved to Rome to continue his artistic training at the Accademia di Sant'Andrea—graduating in 1967—an experience that allowed him to engage with Italian avant-garde movements. He also worked in the studio of Zoe Elena Giotta Frunza (1905–1980), a former student of Constantin Brâncuși (1876–1957). Upon returning to Tunis in 1967, he founded the Groupe des Cinq together with Juliette Garmadi (b.1935), Néjib Belkhodja (1933–2007), Naceur Ben Cheikh (b. 1943), and Fabio Roccheggiani (1925–1967) as a collective of Tunisian artists seeking to renew the local art scene. The following year, thanks to a scholarship from the Tunisian government, he relocated to Paris, living at the Cité internationale des arts, where he took the opportunity to deepen his reflection on writing and symbolic systems at the École du Louvre, where he was an auditing student in the Department of Oriental Antiquities (1968).

In 1968, he met Michel Tapié (1909–1987) and became associated with the Arte Informel movement. He discovered and met international abstract artists such as Lucio Fontana (1899–1968), Sam Francis (1923–1994), Antoni Tapiès (1923–2012), and Isidor Isou (1925–2007), and participated in exhibitions that brought together Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Iranian artists, including Hinsho Domoto, Toshimitsu Imai (1928–2002), and Hossein Zenderoudi (b. 1937). In the early 1970s he began incorporating signs, or ‘free’ graphèmes, into abstract compositions executed on parchment. After several years of travel and study, he returned permanently to Tunisia in 1977 and has pursued his career there ever since.

Style, Techniques and Impact on the Art Scene

Nja Mahdaoui's practice is distinguished by a radical approach to Arabic calligraphy. Freed from any linguistic dimension, his work focuses on an imaginary alphabet composed of repeated gestures, amplified signs, and an entirely reinvented calligraphy. He is above all interested in the morphology of the letter and its gestural and phonetic possibilities. As he himself states, ‘with its distance from the word, the sign offers a new visual opportunity’.

The artist describes his creations as ‘calligrams’ or ‘free graphèmes’ that are empty of all semantic content. This liberation of the Arabic letter from linguistic and academic constraints allows him to explore the sign as a purely visual, musical, and poetic element. In his treatment of the Arabic letter, the first level of articulation (in semiotics and linguistics this refers to the highest structural level of a code, where the system consists of the smallest meaningful units, such as morphemes or words) is suspended, allowing aesthetic properties to pass through that cancel out meaning while allowing its ghost to hover within the graphic fabric. Each time, the viewer's gaze is dispossessed of its appropriation of the legible and brought back to a pure pictorial vision. Although deeply rooted in Arab-Islamic culture, his practice seeks to transcend it to create a universal platform for intercultural dialogue.

In his work, Mahdaoui introduces a sense of movement through variations in full and delicate tracings of cursives and obliques. He ventures to challenge the signifier by playing with forms that border on traditional configurations, only to subvert them immediately through processes that render them meaningless. He breaks with the conventions of traditional calligraphy by arranging clearly defined geometric figures (square, triangle, and circle) where flows of very fine writing (akin to Ghobar, meaning, in Arabic and Persian, fine dust or particles in the air that are illegible to the naked eye) pass along chromatic fields. The spatial distribution of interlocking planes and interlacing cursives is often punctuated by the abrupt rupture of rectilinear tracings. This dynamism is further accentuated by the elongation of the graphic appendages of certain letters, allowing the artist to play with the thickness of the line, even to the point of the evanescence of its curvature, refined to infinity at its extremity. The interlacing of certain tracings, borrowing the volutes and angularity of the various calligraphic forms of the Arabic letter, bursts forth in small black squares reminiscent of punctuation, the trace of the Calamus nib's application.

Mahdaoui’s passion for research has led him to experiment with an exceptional diversity of media: parchment, vellum, papyrus, canvas, paper, aluminium, textile, sculpture, tapestry, embroidery, ceramics, jewellery, metal and glass. He often works with Indian ink on sheepskin, which he sculpts by burning the edges, forging an unprecedented link with parchment. Sometimes he transposes calligraphy’s plastic processes into lyrical abstractions that are predominantly polychromatic. Executed rapidly in thick strokes, these acrylics often unfold in multiple lines, ebbs, and flows.

He has also created monumental works and large-scale installations for public spaces, including frescoes for Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park (2018), the façade of the Arab League Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization (ALECSO) headquarters in Tunis (2015), the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) campus in Saudi Arabia (2010), the Gulf Air headquarters (for their 50th anniversary in 2000), as well as public sculptures and tapestries installed at both the Jeddah and Riyadh airports. He has harnessed the resources of his graphic line through computer processing, transforming letterforms from black and white into infinite, multidimensional chromatic variations, producing airy sculptures suited to contemporary urban design, such as the glass dome of a recent addition to the ALECSO campus in Tunis.

Mahdaoui has also extended his practice to performance art, introducing his work within the framework of theatre and dance through ‘total art’ projects and ‘body-writing’. He performed a body-writing performance in 1985 at the Maison des Cultures du Monde in Paris and another in 1987 at the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen. He has participated in seminars and conferences at universities in Tunisia and abroad. The possibilities offered by the richness of his graphic line and the quasi-physical mastery of calligraphic gesture have led him to create hybrid works with other contemporary artists, such as the German artist Wolfgang Heuwinkel (b.1938).

He has been a jury member and guest of honour at numerous international biennials and served on the international jury of the UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts from 1993 to 1995. He has received major distinctions, including the Grand Prix des Arts et Lettres from the Tunisian Ministry of Culture in 2006, the UNESCO Grand Prix for craftsmanship in the Arab world in 2005, and the Global Art Award in Dubai in 2017.

His work is held in numerous public and private collections, including the British Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, l’institut du monde arabe, the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia (IAMM) in Kuala Lumpur, the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul (Canada), the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, the National Museum of Scotland, the Written Art Foundation, the Farjam Collection, the Barjeel Art Foundation, and the Saudi Aramco Collection.

Bibliography

Nja Mahdaoui, texts by Édouard J. Maunick and Ezzedine Madani, Éditions Cérès, 1983.

Nja Mahdaoui: The Choreographer of Letters, Rose Issa, 2007.

Jafr. The Alchemy of Signs, Molka Mahdaoui, with texts by Rose Issa, Venetia Porter, Michel Tapié, Martina Corgnati, Charbel Dagher, Skira Editions, 2015.

Nja Mahdaoui : le signe en mouvement, Charbel Dagher, 2015.

Signs of Our Times: From Calligraphy to Calligraffiti, Rose Issa, Merrell Publishers, 2016.

Modern Art in the Arab World, MoMA Primary Documents Publication Series, 2018.

Further Readings

Introduction à la Connaissance esthétique, Michel Tapié, Edizioni del Dioscuro, 1971.

Calligraphies : Hommage à Nja Mahdaoui, Horizons Maghrébins, 1998.

L'art du livre arabe: du manuscrit au livre d'artiste, Marie-Geneviève Guesdon and Annie Vernay-Nouri, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2001.

Word into Art: Artists of the Modern Middle East, Venetia Porter, British Museum Press, 2006.

The Dance of Pen and Ink. Contemporary Art of the Middle East, Rose Issa, Triumph Gallery – Hermitage Museum editions, 2007.

Art of the Middle East: Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World and Iran, Saeb Eigner, Merrell Publishers, 2010.