At the heart of the Palais de Tokyo, back-to-back with the centre’s graffiti- covered toilets, Aïcha Snoussi unfurls the tentacles of a humid, watery environment, whose blue-green tint – a recurring element of the artist’s plastic vocabulary – immerses us in an underwater grotto. The billiards table placed in the centre of this space acts as a shrine to nights whiled away

in bars. At once a space of community, festivity and recollection, with the installation Nous étions mille sous la table Aïcha Snoussi is part of a long-term project for which she gathers the traces of a lost queer civilization. Here, her imagination is fueled by the novels of Rivers Solomon (Les Abysses, 2019) and Saleem Haddad (Guapa, 2016), as well as by the paintings of Van Gogh (Café de nuit, 1888) and Frida Khalo (The Wounded Table, 1940), the drawings of Ovartaci (1894 – 1985) and the cave paintings of Tassili N’ajjer. All of these references are brought into resonance with her memories of Le Plug, a now- defunct alternative club in Tunis perched atop concrete pillars where the artist worked for a number of years.

To Yadh and to Leïla