Meriem Bouderbala: Transforming the Female Form

Meriem Bouderbala was born in Tunisia. She studied painting and engraving at the school of Beaux-arts in Provence from 1980 to 1985 and completed a national diploma in the arts. Meriem moved to London in 1986 to study engraving at the Chelsea School of Art.

Meriem has been important to the development of contemporary art and theory in both Tunisia and North Africa and has played a conscious role in supporting and diversifying its reach. In 2003 she became a representative and organizer of a group for contemporary art in the Medina of Tunis. In 2006 Meriem became a commissioner for the Tunisian Party and advocated the exploration of North African and Middle Eastern art. She also participated in the opening of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Algeria in 2007.Meriem’s work is theoretically conditioned by her passion to explore and exploit the potential of ‘minority art’, or contemporary art that works outside of traditional schools of thought. For Meriem Tunisia is advantageously free from the restraints in contemporary art that have effected other southern Mediterranean areas. She feels that the Tunisian art scene is still exploring and weaving an artistic identity, which produces a fertile contemporary art dynamic. Today Meriem lives and works between Paris and Tunisia, and believes this multiple membership of the two communities to have a central influence on her work.