Meriam Bousselmi born 1983 in Tunis, studied law and political science at the University of Tunis Carthage. She is a bilingual Arabic-French writer, director, lawyer, lecturer, researcher and bridge builder. As part of her PhD thesis at the University of Hildesheim, she is researching the strategies of staging (in)justice from a transcultural perspective. She is also exploring the connections between theatre and justice in her artistic works.
In her artistic practice, Meriam Bousselmi combines the most diverse forms of storytelling: literary texts, theatre productions and performative installations. Through ongoing thought-provoking work, she is constantly looking to provide fresh insights into a range of politicized topics surrounding social, political and economic inequalities. Her productions address the topic of instrumentalization, labelization and victimization in the construction of the current dominant intercultural narratives. She is interested in using the blank page and the stage as spaces for Dialogue and Resistance to all forms of political and cultural reduction and manipulation. She defends an approach able to reveal the complexity and intensity of individual and collective experiences.
From 2002-2007 she worked as a playwright and director at the A.R.A.F. Center (Arab-African Center for Theatre Training and Research at El Hamra Theatre) in Tunis.
2016-2017, Meriam Bousselmi was invited to a 12-month artistic residence in Berlin as part of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin program. She decided then to settle in the German capital. In her new projects, the Tunisian writer and director seeks to develop her artistic work within the framework of her new context and dynamics of her immigration. She creates transcultural projects which question the notions of dialogue, translation, transfer of knowledge and experiences between languages and cultures. She wrote and directed “A Look at the World” in 2017, a 50-minute performance in total darkness that explores the sources of hope and resistance. In 2019, she wrote and directed the monologue “HomeWord” which deals with the need for poetry and the power of words by exploring the biography of German poet Hilde Domin. In 2020, she wrote and directed “The Beauty in Between” which questions the limits of translation and the possibilities of communication in what she calls the “jungle of languages”. Because words don’t just tell History, they make it.
https://www.berliner-kuenstlerprogramm.de/en/artist/meriam-bousselmi/
What brought you to Berlin? Love? World politics? Or was it a coincidence?
I live my immigration to Berlin as the fruit of my accumulated Resistances. I can't really say that my immigration is a choice. Rather, a sequel, or maybe some other form of Resistance. When I feel cut off from my Resistance, I feel like I should be somewhere else, where I could be closer to my Resistance. Besides, on the papers, I live in Berlin but in my head, I live in a Resistance.
What do you love about Berlin?
What I find most interesting in Berlin is a form of Resistance. Although I sometimes question this capacity for Resistance that the city inspired in me at the start of my stay. The gaze of the immigrant is certainly more awake than that of the visitor and the tourist that I was in the beginning.
What do you miss in Berlin?
my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, the Tunisian language, the smells and colours of Tunisia
What is your favorite spot in Berlin?
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin-Tiergarten
Would you say you are a different person in Berlin? A different translator? And if yes, in what way?
Immigration is not a solitary act but a process, a trip, a journey, an often intense and disconcerting existential experience. Immigration is also a story. What I learned the most from the ordeal of immigration was humility. The humility that being a foreigner teaches us. In addition, immigration teaches us to get out of laziness.
Which existing literary work do you wish you had written?
Hunger (Norwegian: Sult), the first novel by the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun
Season of Migration to the North, a novel by the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih
2011 Sheikh Sultan Al Qasimi Prize for Best Play at the 4th Arab Theater Festival for the play "Mémoire en retraite"
2011 Fellow of the Writers' residence at the Château du Pont d'Oye in Belgium, mentored by Amélie Nothomb
2012 Fellow of the performing arts section of the Berlin Academy of Arts
2012 Fellow of the Performing Arts Section of the Berlin Academy of Arts
2014 Main prize in the category "Best Playwright" at the 7th Grand Prix Afrique du Théâtre francophone
2014 Prize of the Luxembourg Theater Association for the monodrama "What the Dictator Didn't Say"
2014 Prize for the Best Conference at the end of the Legal Internship at the National Order of Lawyers of Tunisia
Dissertation entitled: “The Protection of playwrights' pecuniary rights”
2015 – 2016 Fellow of the Berlin Artist Program of the DAAD (Literature)
2021 Writer scholarship holder in the Heinrich Böll-Haus Langenbroich e.V.
2022 Scholarship holder of the Berlin Senate annual scholarship for non-German literature
