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Monia Ben Hamouda, Path of Totality, exhibition view at Museo Casa Rusca, Locarno, 2025. Courtesy of the Artist, ChertLüdde Berlin, Selma Feriani Tunis/London. Photo: Cosimo Filippini
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Path of Totality is the first monograph dedicated to the work of Monia Ben Hamouda (Milan, 1991) and is published on the occasion of her exhibition at Museo Casa Rusca in Locarno, curated by Gioia Dal Molin. Drawing on the metaphor of the total solar eclipse—the “path of totality” is the area on Earth in which this phenomenon can be seen—the book reflects on night, suspension, and the conditions of making art in a time of political and existential uncertainty. Conceived as the “crystallization of a moment,” the publication brings together images and texts in a porous, polyphonic structure. Contributions by Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu, Beya Othmani, and Sira Pizà expand the project through multiple perspectives, situating Ben Hamouda’s work within Mediterranean, spiritual, and political contexts.
Below you can read an excerpt from the essay by Gioia Dal Molin featured in the publication.
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Monia Ben Hamouda, Hand Casting a Spell (Aniconism as Figuration Urgency) (detail), 2025, exhibition view at Museo Casa Rusca, Locarno (CH). Courtesy of the Artist, ChertLüdde Berlin, Selma Feriani Tunis/London. Photo: Cosimo Filippini
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Path of Totality – Some Thoughts on Light and Darkness and This Book
by Gioia Dal Molin
“Night,” writes the Lebanese artist and author Etel Adnan, “is an exhalation rising from darkness foreign to it: a / long eclipse.” [1] In astronomical terms, an eclipse occurs when celestial bodies obscure one another. At night, the sun disappears behind the Earth’s horizon. The night as a breath, as a long darkness. Etel Adnan’s lines echo in my mind as I sit down to write this text. In Monia Ben Hamouda’s exhibition Path of Totality at Museo Casa Rusca in Locarno, there is a room illuminated by two suns, as well as a dark room. A breath in which the night rises. Monia’s works have become darker in recent months. For her drawings – made in quick, intuitive hand movements with oil and pastel crayons – she has for some time used black A4 paper instead of ivory. She adds black charcoal or dark grey ash to the spices (such as light brown cinnamon or orange turmeric) and other natural ingredients (such as red earth or pink hibiscus), which she uses as a palette of colours for large paintings on raw linen. This darkness presses into her artistic practice. At the same time, the question of what art, what an artistic practice can be, keeps cropping up in my conversations with Monia. In a moment of darkness. In the current state of the world.
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Monia Ben Hamouda, Wudu Dioram, 2022, exhibition view at Lower Cavity, Holyoke (MA). Courtesy of the Artist, ChertLüdde Berlin, Selma Feriani Tunis/London
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Path of Totality – this book and the exhibition at Museo Casa Rusca – arose from these questions. The ‘path of totality’ is the area on Earth in which a total solar eclipse can be seen. The moon completely covers the sun, and darkness descends for a moment. Lunar cycles are of great importance in the Islamic cultural sphere (whose knowledge, traditions, stories, and rituals are a central reference for Monia). The view of the night sky, of the moon, determines the dates of religious holidays such as Eid and Ramadan. I think of Etel Adnan’s lines. A dark moment, yet one that lasts. A long darkness. Monia tells me that in 2014, after completing her BA at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, she travelled to Lapland, in northern Finland, to focus on her work and her feelings, alone in the darkness of the polar night. And she adds: “Probably I feel the same way now, for different reasons, after 11 years.” This book is therefore a situated snapshot. A “crystallisation of a moment,” as Monia says. A moment to pause and look inside Monia’s studio and artistic practice. And a look at the world, at the political context in which Monia situates herself and her work. “History is happening / right now / outside these walls,” writes Monia in neon letters in her installation Monument to Vulnerability IV (Stoning of the Devil) for the Museum of Cultures (MUDEC) in Milan. The ‘walls’ of this book are meant to be porous. Images and texts come together to form a fragmentary, polyphonic, and multi-perspective whole.
CONTINUE READING
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Monia Ben Hamouda, The Posterity of the Sun, exhibition view at VIMA, Limassol (CY), 2025. Courtesy of the Artist, ChertLüdde Berlin, Selma Feriani Tunis/London
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[1] Edel Adnan, Night. Nightboat Books, New York, 2016, p. 13.
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