Clavis Tabula

Ouissem Moalla (b. 1990 in Stockholm), winner of the 2023 Strasbourg <> Frankfurt exchange programme, is a graduate of the Haute École des Arts du Rhin (HEAR). He lives and works in Mulhouse.

Through predominantly performative works, his artistic approach draws on theoretical research into imagery, as well as historical and anthropological analyses of cultural hybridization. In recent years, building on the writings of British historian Frances A. Yates, particularly her book The Art of Memory (1966), Moalla has begun exploring the perception of space, its functions, and potentialities in relation to memory.

From January to April 2023, he spent three months at basis e.V. in Frankfurt, where he explored connections between Yiddish and Hebrew texts from the archives of the Frankfurter Buchmesse (Book Fair) and a work held in the city’s historical museum collection, focusing on use of the hand as a memory aid. At the end of this residency, he debuted his project Clavis Tabula (the Latin for ‘key board’). Clavis Tabula takes form as a research and experimentation laboratory, where gloves – crafted and embroidered with letters – are activated in a filmic performance and can also be interacted with by visitors.

For his solo exhibition at the CEAAC, Moalla reimagined his research on mnemonics to resonate with the work of Endre Tót, featured simultaneously in the Dirty Rains exhibition. In a manner similar to the Hungarian artist, known for his use of typographic signs in his photographic, postal, and performative works, Ouissem Moalla shows that obscuring a message’s readability does not render the message invalid.