Agenda

Mixing heritage objects, artistic creations and visual and sound archives, an immersion in this pivotal moment that is marriage. An event that is celebrated with great pomp in the Maghreb, where it is an opportunity to build community by gathering around a collective joy.

An exceptional selection of costumes and finery

The exhibition is organized around heritage works and presents a selection of about forty costumes and ornaments never presented in France, from Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian collections. These exceptional pieces dating from the 19th and 20th centuries celebrate the bride and the women who surround her while highlighting national and regional specificities, the richness of heritages and practices shared in particular between Muslims and Jews.
Focusing on the bride but also on the role of women during these celebrations – from creating the trousseau to making the pieces or even accompanying the bride –, The exhibition also seeks to confront these heritage works with artists’ perspectives and thus highlight contemporary societal trends or developments.

The voice of 18 contemporary artists

In order to capture the essence of these festivals in all their diversity, the exhibition, mirroring these rare and exceptional collections, gives voice to eighteen contemporary artists, mainly women, from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and their diasporas, who set their subjective gaze on this important moment in social and intimate life, and make us go through the codified stages of marriage and understand what these ritual festivals say today about the societies that practice them.
Some artists celebrate the traditions, the moments of collective joy that these festivals allow, and question the heritage of these traditions and their survivals. Others put into perspective certain practices of marriage with the societies that practice them and the ideologies they convey.
The exhibition is accompanied by a cultural program and abundant mediation, inaugurated on July 4, 2026 by a large parade under the artistic direction of Mohamed Bourouissa.