Artist Interview with Zohra Mrad
On Chaos, Collaboration and Culture for All
Multidisciplinary artist Zohra Mrad creates immersive experiences through interactive and generative visual art, installations and performances. Having worked with institutions such as Rotondes and Casino Luxembourg, Zohra’s DIY, experimental and collaborative approach to creativity brings a fresh wind into the Luxembourgish art scene, which is still oftentimes dominated by individualism and marketability. Zohra highlights the need for artistic solidarity over competition; space for experimentation over ready-to-sell ‘finished’ art; and free access to culture over financial exclusion.
© Zohra Mrad
Born and raised in Tunisia, Zohra studied interaction and digital graphic design in Paris where they lived and worked in advertising and user experience until they settled down in Luxembourg 2 years ago. During their design studies, they acquired the technical knowledge that laid the foundation for their art practice. But their artist journey only truly took off once they got the opportunity to break out of the technical constraints of the design jobs they’d been taking on and got to forge their own creative path.
The opportunity for this came around 2020, around the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, there was a huge rollback of immigration rights in Europe around that time. A lot of Zohra’s close artist friends from Tunisia did not get their student visas renewed and therefore were forced to return back home. The frustration of all these creatives suddenly being kicked out of Europe however didn’t leave them stagnant: back in Tunisia, they created the experimental audio and visual art collective B-SAAD, of which Zohra was a co-founder. ‘We built on the techno scene that already existed in Tunisia. It was our playground to try new things’, Zohra states.
Zohra started travelling back to their country of birth on a regular basis to work with the collective. ‘It was the perfect opportunity for me to try all the visual installations and experimentations I’ve always wanted to try’. Although Western countries such as France have massively profited from exploiting former colonies (now neo-colonial), artists from these former colonies are still oftentimes made to feel unwelcome and alienated when living and creating in the West. The creation of collectives such as B-SAAD is a response to this phenomenon, rejecting efforts to undermine the artists’ origins and instead empowering their communities.
© Zohra Mrad
This experience was truly foundational for Zohra’s art practice: ‘B-SAAD allowed me to collaborate with other people doing different kinds of work. It allowed me to do what is important for me: first, do my work, but then also allow others to practice theirs, too.’ With B-SAAD, Zohra organized their first exhibitions in apartments and bars, for which they gathered different artists to exhibit their work. They also organized concerts featuring different DJs and producers, where they’d get to try live visual performance to go alongside music for the first time. All of these efforts show that when you create a moment for creativity to flourish, you can elevate each other even if you start off in unofficial spaces such as in apartments. These kinds of initiatives are what makes culture accessible at its core by removing the institution and connecting the artist and the audience directly.
These collaborative live projects in particular would come to shape their view on centering art that is spontaneous, chaotic and community-based, rather than a stagnant, isolated and finished product. Zohra is inspired by the extreme music scene (anything from experimental electronics to noise, punk, and metal), and most of their visuals are generative or interactive images which they mix on the spot in response to this music. ‘They are things you’ll never see again’, Zohra states, ‘and there is a lot of potential for errors. And this is what I love. I love chaos, and I love the things that can come from all the distortion.’
As an artist, Zohra always juggles multiple projects and thrives in artistic collaborations with others. Zohra has also started collaborating with poets when they were living in Paris. This type of work started with poet Selim-a Atallah Chettaoui, whom they knew from Tunisia. Since then, Zohra has done a number of events where their immersive visuals go alongside different poets’ performances, one of which was held at Centre Pompidou in Paris. These electro-poetic DJ sets then culminated in the creation of the ecopoetry review foehn, which they co-founded.
© Zohra Mrad
Zohra’s open-mindedness and fluid approach when it comes to their artistic creation is not only reflected in their active willingness to collaborate with other artists on all sorts of projects, but also in their belief that art itself should be freely accessible to the public. ‘Art doesn’t really mean anything without its audience, especially when it comes to the sort of interactive art I do. I prefer for there to be an audience rather than for people to be pushed out because it is too expensive for them.’
When reflecting on the art scene in Luxembourg, Zohra is in two minds. For one, they love the accessibility of public money for art, as well as the direct contact artists have with curators and officials in big arts institutions. It renders the cultural scene open in a way that they haven’t encountered before in other countries, preventing artists from entering into a rat race with one another for limited funding opportunities.
However, Zohra laments the lack of spaces where artists can freely showcase unfinished work; work that is still in the process of becoming. ‘In Luxembourg, the art scene is in extremes. A music event can either be completely free or it costs 25 euros. Why not have something in between where artists can show off their art, without the pressure of it being ‘finished’?’
In this spirit of accessibility, Zohra has recently co-hosted the VIVID ECHOES residency, a cycle of recurring 3-week-long residencies, in Schluechthaus and Rotondes. The idea for this residency is for the selected artists to create freely, without any pressure of having a finished product to showcase at the end of it. As such, VIVID ECHOES differs from other residencies in Luxembourg, allowing creatives to go at their own pace and fully immerse themselves in the process of experimenting with their art.
© Zohra Mrad
‘With this project, I can help people do their thing. I can share my knowledge, but then the artists can do what they want with that, ’ Zohra says. ‘It’s funny, a lot of people tell me that I’m not competitive enough. But I don’t see other artists as my opponents. I think that if we push each other to grow and share, it will only push us all as a collective. To try new challenges, to be better and to go deeper. The more people know, the better it ultimately is for me; it will push me to go further in my own practice’.
As the co-founder of numerous creative projects with doubtlessly more to come, Zohra shows us that artists do not need to wait for creative opportunities: they can create their own. Their boundary-breaking arts practice shows us a spirit of collaboration and solidarity that we deeply admire, and that we hope to see more of in Luxembourg. In the face of a sector that all too often reproduces capitalism’s logic of competitiveness, inequality and profit-making, Zohra shows us that there is power in creating artistic communities in defiance to those power structures, both directly or indirectly. At the end of the day, the only way to achieve real change is to work together and foster spontaneous spaces for creativity and community. Through their work, Zohra is offering us a moment to imagine a world where art brings people together and allows them to uplift each other.
If you’re interested in Zohra’s numerous projects (of which we addressed but a handful in this article), check out their Instagram @mradzo or their website mradzo.com.
© Philippe Schroeder
