Born in Tunis in 1985, Mohammed Amine Abassi became interested in various artistic disciplines early on. At the age of 14, he tried his hand at poetry and composed his first verses while taking his inspiration from the poets of the Tunisian Diaspora. Four years later, he joined a Death Metal music band as a bass player, with which he gave about forty concerts between 2008 and 2012 throughout Tunisia. Very sensitive to visual culture, the importance of which was revealed by the Arab spring, Abassi joined in 2012 the Photo Club of Tunis alongside Seif Allah Bouneb and Ibtihel Zaatour. As with each of his artistic adventures, Mohammed Amine seeks, questions, meets to explore history and the possibilities provided by photography. Quickly, he found a resonance to his creative search through pictorialism, to which he borrows the codes of representation.
While his peers endeavor to depict the social change witnessed by the country, Amine has chosen to point his lens on a quite different field and has withdrawn from the urban setting to let himself be appeased by the curves and reliefs of the Tunisian countryside.
He then spent long moments observing the natural environment and its components. Over the course of the day and then with the seasons, he examined its resistance to time. He focused on emaciated, cracked, thin trees that are almost ready to collapse under the weight of the tests of time, without, however, ever giving up. His long retreats quickly echo a dominating human figure in Abassi’s life: his 87-year old grandmother, who while physically scarred by the passing of time, opposes an absolute resistance to resignation.
Like the other editions of La Chambre Claire, the exhibition The Eloquence of Roots is intended to travel and will have Tunis as first stopover, to enable Mohammed Amine share his creation with the Tunisian audience.