As part of the MECAM Fellowship “Imagining Futures: Dealing with Disparity,” Justin Malachowski will develop a book manuscript based on four years of ethnographic research on Tunisia’s contemporary public art scene. The project explores how public art has emerged as a central site for imagining and enacting alternative futures in the wake of Tunisia’s 2011 revolution. It traces the rapid expansion of the arts sector within a broader transformation of civil society, shaped by political liberalization, international development agendas, and shifting legal frameworks.

The book examines how public art practices engage with long-standing debates around national identity, historical memory, and cultural heritage, while also responding to new challenges posed by foreign funding, political oversight, and economic precarity. Particular attention is given to how artists and cultural practitioners negotiate the competing demands of international donors, local communities, and the state. Public art, in this context, becomes both a mode of aesthetic experimentation and a field of political contestation.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a decade, the manuscript analyzes how artistic initiatives articulate visions of social transformation rooted in local contexts, yet deeply entangled with global discourses on development, participation, and decoloniality. It critically engages with how these dynamics have shaped both the form and content of contemporary art in Tunisia, and how they reflect broader tensions between sovereignty, cultural autonomy, and transnational influence.

By situating Tunisia’s public art scene within regional and global frameworks, the book contributes to interdisciplinary debates in anthropology, art history, cultural studies, and development studies. It offers a grounded analysis of how art mediates questions of futurity, identity, and governance in post-revolutionary contexts, and aims to provide new insights into the cultural politics of the Global South.