An immersive journey around a symbolic object/span>

Throughout the museum’s 3 spaces, visitors are immersed in a sound and spatial environment that puts them in the position of visiting a prisoner. And it’s from the real and symbolic object of the couffin (Koffa), from its preparation to its delivery, via the many administrative and logistical stages, that this exhibition on human rights is built. The couffin object embodies the prisoner’s link between the outside world and the prison environment, as well as the difficulties faced by families in gaining access to the prison environment.

Cross-reflections: the complexity of history and the duty to remember

This exhibition is the culmination of over a year of discussions, workshops, story-telling and in-depth reflection on the “memorialization” of a traumatic past, and on the process of musealizing artifacts that bear witness to this past in a post-dictatorial context. All this took place during workshops we organized with our project partners: the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) and the University of Birmingham (UK).

Here, the museum discourse provides an intimate understanding of the complexities of history. It is made up of oral testimonies, objects and images on the perspectives of Tunisian women under dictatorship, in dialogue with artistic proposals. The ensemble attempts to highlight the suffering of individuals confronted with the inhuman practices of the system, corruption and oppression, but also the tensions of these human interactions.

A travelling exhibition

The “Voices of Memory” exhibition toured Tunisia from September to December 2018 in the cities of Tunis, El Kef, Sfax and Redeyef.

Within the museographic device, a room for reflection and collection from visitors offers a space to welcome spontaneous testimonies in order to enrich and continue this memory work. Visitor-participants are invited to fill in a value charter before collecting traces of their memories. In this way, this participative operation combines the writing of a collective memory in the present with the duty of remembrance, activating the intergenerational link by awakening the younger generations and contributing to the recognition of a collective trauma – such is the ambition of this exhibition.