Héla Fattoumi: It happened a little suddenly as if something had been brewing inside, for a long time. From my acquisition of a hijab, there were several stages in my thought processes. Why do I want to talk about “that”? From what perspective to address it?
I recalled all the times I was appalled and fascinated by encounters with veiled women, by seeing news reporting, or reading about the subject. Particularly after the great shock of September 2001 that cut the world in two in a quite distinct manner: East/West, Good/Evil. This over-simplification that I had always found so terribly dangerous, notably in France, with the debate concerning wearing the veil at school... I have always been struck by the hypocrisy of these well-off women wearing upon their person the marks of two extremes, from prudishness to the excesses of the consumerist womanobject. But what disturbs me even more are the educated women, often intellectuals, who accept wearing the veil and take pride in it. How can they fulfil themselves within this cage of cloth?
Éric Lamoureux: The first time Héla appeared wearing the hijab, it was a shock for me, a hallucination. I watched her move and she seemed to be an unreal being. In the beginning, she herself wasn’t convinced.
Héla Fattoumi: That’s true! I was hesitant more from fear of everything we were going to touch upon and discover concerning my own personal history... But once I began to put myself on the inside, exploring with the veil, the doubt was gone! The first time I put it on, I felt like I was “in hiding”. It wasn’t unpleasant; nobody recognizes you and at the same time you feel elegant. But rapidly, you ask yourself if you still really exist, you suffocate and try to get out. After working out a corpus of texts and images, the first phase of work was centred principally on the garment itself, on its sculptural and visual potential, bringing forth a sort of ideal of the cloth. Our discussions and analyses allowed us to ceaselessly relaunch the imagination related to this problematic, just as complex as it is dangerous. More than ever before, it’s necessary for us to closely watch what we are weaving.
Éric Lamoureux: After ten days of rehearsal, I too felt the desire to put on the hijab. A rather strange sensation. It’s fluid, it’s ample, a vector for the imagination... The port de bras is particular, you move in a different manner, the trace of the