Formed at the Haute École des Arts du Rhin (HEAR), Ouissem Moalla (born in 1990 in Stockholm) explores themes of space and memory in his work, drawing inspiration from the research of historian Frances A. Yates. He draws from popular and literary culture, myths, and major texts, with language as a recurring thread. This takes shape through performances, installations, and paintings in which he questions space, our relationship to places, cosmogony, and beliefs.

Whether in Mulhouse, where his studio is located, or during residencies (Motoco&co Tokyo 2018; CEEAC - Basis E.v. Frankfurt 2023; Villa Salammbô Institut français Tunisia 2024), he works with the remnants of industrial ruins (G.O.L.D, 2017), explores myths and representations of urban gateways (Impressions d’Espaces, 2024), wanders around a Shinto shrine carrying chairs strapped to his back to form the character 目 (mù / eye) (Monkey, 2018), or reinterprets mystical texts by intertwining language and the body (Clavis Tabula, 2023). His work, enriched by multicultural influences, flirts with the human and social sciences, questioning archives and communities.

Ouissem Moalla classifies his works into «series», each forming a universe that he continuously expands with new projects exploring the same themes.

A FOURTH TIGER 2025

A residency project at NY20Plus for the International Upcycle Art Festival in Chengdu, China.

The work refers to the bi (Chinese 璧), a usually jade disc pierced with a central hole and used for ritual or decorative purposes. The making of bi dates back at least to the Liangzhu culture (3300–2000 BCE) and continued for several millennia, up until the Han dynasty. Neolithic bi discs were undecorated, while those from later periods, such as the Zhou dynasty, display far more elaborate surfaces, carved in relief with motifs representing deities associated with the sky, as well as qualities or powers that the bearer of the disc sought to invoke or embody.

The bi thus appears as an object of memory, a device for storing information: explicitly in later periods, through inscriptions and engraved images, and more speculatively in earlier times, when the object served as the focus of oral or performative rituals before being offered.

A Fourth Tiger draws a parallel between the bi and modern storage technologies such as the CD-ROM or the printed circuit: similar in shape, minimalist and polished, both fulfill a function of storage and mediation within very different temporal contexts. Whereas the bi served to transmit information to divine forces and cosmic entities, the CD-ROM and flash drives perform this function of transmission between humans. CD-ROMs and printed circuits are also subject to a kind of ritual, whether in their complex production processes or in the act of burning, which requires a machine into which they are inserted and a specific language for encoding information.

The title refers to the work of philosopher Yuk Hui, in connection with a text titled “2 or 3 Tigers”, which explores the relationship between technology and symbolism, particularly in the context of modernization and the challenges of globalization. The phrase likely derives from his reflections on the loss of symbolic meaning in a technological world and the attempt to preserve symbolic values through digital means. The following two artistic proposals aim to materialize this line of thought.