Beya Othmani

The Gravel Mosque

Beya Othmani was born in 1992 in Tunis, Tunisia. She has a BA in Middle East studies from McGill University, Montreal, and an MA in Spatial Strategies from the Berlin-Weissensee School of Art (KHB). Now an independent curator and researcher based in Tunis, she is a recipient of the COARC/Mellon Art History fellowship. Her research focuses on exhibition histories, the construction of racial identities in the arts, and state-led exhibition-making practices in colonial and post-colonial Africa.

She is a member of Archive Sites, a platform for publishing and cultural research based in Berlin, Milan, and Dakar, where she co-curates the program Publishing Practices. For Archive Sites Berlin she co-curated This Bridge Can Get Us There (2021), an exhibition and residency program that explored the subversive and emancipatory potential of publishing. She also curated Alger Insolite, an online research project, for Untitled Duo and Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles (2021); and co-curated the Sonsbeek Council #1 in Tunis (2020). She was part of the curatorial team for various exhibitions including Shadow Circus, Berlinale Forum Expanded (2019) and The Dog Done Gone Deaf, Dakar Biennale (2018), and co-produced the event series Listening Sessions: Untraining the Ear (2017–20) at SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin.