Elyssa Project: A Celebration of Tunisian Contemporary Creation
The French Institute of Tunisia (IFT) organized the closing ceremony of the Elyssa project on Friday, January 23, 2026, at the Palais Ahmed Bey in La Marsa. This event marked the culmination of 18 months of artistic, professional, and human support for Tunisian contemporary creation. The evening was a time for restitution, assessment, and perspective on an ambitious program dedicated to visual arts and music, while also opening up reflections on future prospects for the laureates and the Tunisian cultural ecosystem as a whole.
A Collective Journey Celebration
The event brought together artists, partners, cultural professionals, and the public from 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm, around a program that combined a retrospective exhibition, speeches, musical performances, and convivial moments. The guests first discovered a documentary exhibition tracing the different stages of the Elyssa project, before attending a performance by the group Tasawer, composed of young musicians from the Higher Institute of Music in Tunis, embodying the spirit of transmission and dialogue at the heart of the program.
The interventions of Fabrice Rousseau, Director of the French Institute of Tunisia, Saima Samoud, Head of the Elyssa project, Mohamed Ben Soltane and Hedi Khelil, Co-Directors of the visual arts section, as well as Mohamed Ben Said, Director of the music section, allowed for a review of the project's philosophy, challenges, and successes. The evening was punctuated by a performance by Nejia, a laureate of the musical section, as well as testimonials from beneficiary artists (Olfa Trabelsi, Safa Attyaoui, Aymen Goubaa, and Aymen Ben Attia) before closing around 10:00 pm with a festive moment animated by Aly Mrabet on the turntables.
Elyssa: A 360-Degree Program
"Designing Elyssa was about imagining a 360-degree program, capable of supporting artists throughout the entire value chain of creation: from the emergence of the artistic idea to its realization, professional structuring, and sharing with the public," emphasized Saima Samoud, Project Manager. She recalled the complexity of a device addressing two sectors with distinct logics: "In the visual arts, the timelines are long, the processes often solitary; in music, the work is more collective, rhythmed by precise technical phases with rapid confrontation with the public."
For Fabrice Rousseau, this closure marks above all a stage: "Elyssa is not an end, but a time for assessment and opening up to the post-Elyssa era." He recalled that the project was fully part of the IFT's mission: "Creation as a process, not just a result. Elyssa was designed as a coherent journey, with its stages, its breaths, its moments of deepening."
A Significant Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment
Over the entire program, 32 laureate artists were selected from four calls for applications that received 360 files. The device supported 12 musical artists/projects and 20 visual artists, reflecting the diversity of aesthetics and trajectories of the Tunisian contemporary scene.
The program mobilized significant expertise, with over 30 French, Tunisian, and international mentors invited, guaranteeing high-quality support throughout the creation chain. In terms of public outreach, the "Parcours I مسارات" exhibition, presented from September 26 to October 11, 2025, at the French Institute of Tunisia and the Palais Kheireddine, welcomed 1,300 visitors. The musical section had a strong moment with the "Elyssa fête la musique" festival, organized on June 20 and 21, 2025, at the International Cultural Center of Hammamet (CCIH), gathering nearly 400 visitors each evening on two stages set up in the park.
Visual Arts Section: From Residency to Exhibition
Twenty visual artists, emerging and confirmed, were supported through three research and creation residencies of 21 days organized at Tilal Utique (Fondation Kamel Lazaar) between February and June 2025. These residency periods were framed by high-quality mentorship ensured by Mohamed Ben Soltane, Hedi Khelil, Houari Bouchenak, Xavier de Luca, Ji-Yoon Han, Camille Bardin, Madeleine Filippi, and Clelia Coussonnet, as well as by many Tunisian and French experts.
Beyond the residencies, the artists continued their work in workshops or on the field thanks to production grants and benefited from post-residency support, including portfolio readings, conferences, and training on copyright, taxation, social networks, and the creation of professional portfolios.
The "Parcours I مسارات" exhibition marked the public culmination of this journey. It opened in a particular context, marked by the disappearance of Wadi Mhiri, a laureate artist of the program and a major figure in Tunisian arts, to whom a tribute was paid.
Musical Section: From Creation to the Stage
The musical section of the Elyssa program was imagined as a progressive journey, accompanying Tunisian artists from the creative intuition to the stage. For six months, twelve musical projects were supported in an artistic, technical, and professional skills development.
The journey was articulated around several phases:
- Musical creation residencies (January-February 2025, CCIH) for seven laureate projects (Nejia Abidi Malki, Soudeni, Chaima Mahmoud, Laimanprod, Jathb, PsychedelicWinds, and Hadra), supervised by mentors Pierre Marolleau and Khalil Hentati.
- Manager residencies (January-February 2025, CCIH) conducted in parallel, allowing artistic teams to acquire concrete tools in career management, booking, administration, and digital communication, under the guidance of Mohamed Ben Said, Imed Alibi, and Amira Kallel.
- Pre-recording and recording residencies (March-April 2025, Studio Wild Tunes) to transform compositions into accomplished sound works, accompanied by Kais Melliti, Mohamed Ben Said, Mondher Fellah, Aymen Ben Atia, Ammar 808, and Sami Ben Said.
- Live and professionalization residencies (May-June 2025, CCIH) bringing together all twelve laureates to transform musical projects into professional stage performances, supervised by Karim Ziad, Stéphane Puech, Imed Alibi, Kais Melliti, David Aubaile, Leila Chaibadra, and Farah Kammoun.
- "Elyssa fête la musique" (June 20-21, 2025, CCIH), a festival offering the twelve laureate groups a demanding visibility space with an eclectic programming revealing the creativity and vitality of the contemporary Tunisian music scene.
Partnerships and Circulation Dynamics
Elyssa relied on a strong cooperation dynamic, with the involvement of key partners: Creativalue/Jiseret Archiv'art for visual arts, Akacia Production, and Wild Tunes Production for music, as well as the Tilal Utique (Fondation Kamel Lazaar) and the Centre Culturel International de Hammamet residency locations.
The logic of circulation of works and artists, placed at the heart of the project, was concretized from the summer of 2025 with diffusions in Tunisia (Hammamet Festival, See Djerba Festival, Carthage Theater Days, French Institute of Sousse) and in France (Tunis sur Seine, Arabesques festival in Montpellier, Point Fort d'Aubervilliers). Multiple opportunities are scheduled for 2026, notably within the framework of the France-Mediterranean Season.
"A true Elyssa network has been created, a community bringing together artists, cultural professionals, diffusion locations, and entrepreneurs," emphasized Fabrice Rousseau.
Perspectives and Heritage
Beyond the numbers, Elyssa has allowed for the creation of conditions for long-term support, based on artistic requirement, professional structuring, and networking. "What matters today, beyond what we celebrate, are the lasting achievements, the strengthened trajectories, the triggered dynamics," concluded Fabrice Rousseau.
The closing ceremony thus marked not an end, but a stage in a process destined to continue, with artists now better equipped to pursue their professional and artistic development on national and international stages.
