Wool, fragility explored at Arab Cultural Club exhibition

Tunisian artist with academic and artistic background

Dalal Sammari is a doctor of fine arts, a university professor, a researcher, and an art critic, with numerous studies and articles published in Arab cultural magazines and on websites. She has participated in many exhibitions and has presented three solo shows prior to this fourth exhibition.

Expressing human fragility through wool

Through “Al Bain,” Sammari sought to present works that reflect the fragility and vulnerability of the contemporary human condition. She described human life as a state between joy and sorrow, hope and despair, ease and hardship, and certainty and doubt — a continuous existence “in between” all aspects of life.

To convey this concept, she sought a material that could embody it. She explained that a strong concept requires an appropriate artistic medium, just as a good material needs a meaningful idea. She found wool, with its fragility and flexibility, to be the perfect medium for expressing the notion of “in-betweenness.”

Sammari noted that she comes from a community with a long tradition of wool weaving, and her mother was a skilled weaver. This personal connection led her to choose wool as her primary material. She also undertook specialised training in wool felting to master the techniques required to create her artistic forms.

Cultural symbols and expressive forms

Calligrapher Khalifa Al Sheimi, head of artistic activities at the club, said hosting Sammari’s exhibition reflects the club’s openness to diverse contemporary Arab artistic experiences, particularly those that offer new creative horizons. He described her work as ambitious and distinctive.

The artist explained that she selects wool in the desired background colour, sprays it with water and soap, and presses it to shape the base. She then places additional coloured wool pieces on top to create symbols, lines, and expressive forms, spraying the material again so it bonds with the background.

Her work draws inspiration from Tunisian folk culture, shaped by the influences of civilisations that passed through the region, including Phoenician, Amazigh, and Arab cultures. The exhibition frequently features circles, vertical lines, arrows, and abstract human figures, symbolising the tension between openness and closure and the ambiguity of human existence.

A philosophical artistic vision

Speaking about the concept behind the exhibition, Sammari said that in an era where grand meanings erode and references lose stability, the contemporary self finds itself suspended in a state of constant existential uncertainty. Her work does not present the self as a complete entity but as an evolving state open to doubt, search, and repositioning in a world without certainties.

She added that her practice stems from an organic relationship with the material itself, not merely as a tool but as embodied thought. Wool, with its fragility and transparency, becomes a symbolic body and a tangible memory, reflecting the relationship between humans and material, control and release, and construction and dissolution.