Visages du Dedans /Inside Faces

This book is the result of collaboration between a visual artist and a poet who have known each other for a long time. They have worked together previously as writer and illustrator, but the originality of this text is that Micheline has presented Hédi with faces which are labeled according to their profession or function (Writer, Librarian, Architect, Painter and Muse, Cardiologist), or as reflections of an ontological or spiritual quest (Stranger, Cleansing, Thinker, Buddha, Paradise, Valentine), or sometimes as objects of social satire (the Parisienne fashionista, the perpetrators of global warming, of weapons of mass destruction). The paintings are very colorful, very Mediterranean, and fall somewhere between l’Art brut and representational. The expression on the faces reveals some of the character traits. What Hédi Bouraoui has done is to poetize the interior, what lies behind the faces, to strip off the social mask.