Prison des délits de cœur

Rhythmed by two swings, Sondoss Belhassen and Malek Sebai evoke the Dar Joued, domestic common-law prison, operating until the last century in Tunisia, where “uncontrollable” women were held.

This installation stages a part of the buried memory of Tunisians of the last century. The Dar Joued were rehabilitation centres (borstals) where disobedient and rebel women were imprisoned; the purpose of these institutions was to “re-educate” and calm married and promised women who refused to comply with social and matrimonial rules.

These centres were permanently closed by Habib Bourguiba in 1956. Certain women, who are still alive today and who spent time in Dar Joued, refuse to witness as long as the opprobrium and the dishonour continue to relegate them to the rank of “black sheep”. These women were greatly affected and the shame of having tried to free themselves from the yoke of enforced sexual and social confinement continues to haunt the memories of some of them even today, to the point where the history of these institutions has remained extremely blurred and very few written and oral testimonies exist.

So “…forgetting Dar Joued is like trying to erase the tainted honour from memory…” (Marginales en terre d’Islam. Delenda and Abdelhamid Larguèche. Cérès Editions).

Updating: September 2011