Becoming the Ocean

Becoming the Ocean is the exhibition of the 2026 Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement (BIM'26). It runs from 24 October to 22 November 2026 at Quechlet El Attarine in the Medina of Tunis, as part of Jaou Tunis 2026. Lina Lazaar and Andrea Bellini curated it together. Sixteen artists of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Arab world, and of their diasporas, each show a new commission. Among them is Sarah Zeryab's forty-minute single-channel video installation. The doors open at 2pm on Saturday 24 October 2026, and Chuquimamani Condori performs live at 5pm. Entry is free.

The curators propose interdependence as something people need to survive. The works respond to war, migration and political struggle, to ecological damage, to ancestral knowledge and technological change, and to memory. Zeryab's Notes on Camp (أول الرصاص، أول الحجارة), 2026, is set in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. Passing from its old cemetery, where Abu Jihad was buried in 1988, to its new one, it recalls the assassination of a man named Ali in 2023. Alaa Mansour shows a new work, Divine Birds. The other exhibiting artists are Tabarak Allah Abbas, Younès Ben Slimane, Mona Benyamin, S.A. Chavarría, Leena Habiballa, Roman Selim Khereddine, Zein Majali, Paulo Nazareth, Diane Severin Nguyen, Liv Schulman, Hildegard Titus, Natasha Tontey, Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro and Hajra Waheed.

Zeryab, born in Damascus in 1991, is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist who works in film and performance and in listening formats. Mansour, a Lebanese artist born in Kinshasa in 1989, divides her time between Beirut and Marseille. Her films include Aïnata (2018) and The Mad Man's Laughter (2021), and she also works in sound and installation. In 2023 the Han Nefkens Foundation and Fundació Antoni Tàpies awarded her their Video Art Production Grant.

BIM'26, a platform for moving image, is a co-production between the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, directed by Bellini, and the Kamel Lazaar Foundation, where Lazaar is Vice President. Tunis is the first city outside Switzerland to host the biennale. Jaou Tunis, launched by the Kamel Lazaar Foundation in 2013, holds its eighth edition from 23 October to 22 November 2026. Quechlet El Attarine, a former barracks, was completed in 1813 to 1814 under Hammuda Pasha Bey. It later served as a prison, then housed the National Library of Tunisia until 2005. From Tunis, BIM'26 continues to Venice, Brussels, Geneva and London.