Monia Ben Hamouda
Curated by Barbara Boninsegna and Simone Frangi
Centrale Fies, Dro
16 -26 July 2026

Monia Ben Hamouda’s solo show, running from 16 to 26 July, will be the centrepiece of Centrale Fies’ summer programme. An invitation to inhabit complexity, to embrace what escapes definition, and to recognise language as one of the places where the inheritances that shape us come to rest. Not everything asks to be explained; some stories continue to speak precisely through what remains unresolved. Born in Milan to a Tunisian family, Monia Ben Hamouda has developed a practice that moves between the histories of Middle Eastern and Western European art, approaching language as something alive: capable of shifting, transforming and continuously generating new meanings. At the heart of her work lies the legacy of Islamic calligraphy passed down by her father, understood not as a tradition to be preserved unchanged, but as a living material through which new forms and new possibilities for relation can emerge. Monumental sculptures in steel, sand and spices inhabit the exhibition space, transforming it into a landscape of signs, scents, colours and presences. In dialogue with the tradition of aniconism, which privileges text and ornament over figurative representation, Ben Hamouda creates works that resist singular interpretation. Drawing inspiration from Najdi poetry, a vernacular poetic form that emerged in the Arabian Peninsula during the sixteenth century, she imagines language as something that moves across time and geography, transforming, migrating and enduring. At Centrale Fies, large suspended sculptures appear to defy gravity, while sand partially invades the exhibition space, subjecting the works to a slow process of transformation. This is not a gesture of ruin, but a way of questioning time, the stratification of history, and the forms through which memories are preserved, transmitted, or forgotten.