Tissardmine, Sahara Desert Art Residency Program, April and May 2024//Situated in an oasis, the tiny traditional Berber village of Tissardmine, is a short drive or long walk away from one of the Sahara’s most extraordinary natural phenomenons, Erg Chebbi, a large dune stretching 22 kms long and 5 kms wide and peaking up to 150 metres high. Formed by wind blown sand, Erg Chebbi is celebrated for its unique golden-orange sand formations that start at the most northern tip of the Sahara and undulate across Morocco to Tomboctou. The Saharan erg is now in southeast Morocco near the Algerian border.//Tissardmine is an artist-in-residence program that supports the creative development of artists and curators, encourages collaborations with other cultural structures or programs, like LE 18, exchanges with other artists, the relationship with the nomadic inhabitants, to know about their own culture through the prism of contemporary art, and the compatibility with the desert.//The population in the region where Tissardmine lies is primarily Amazigh (or Berber) who speak Tashlehiyt. Many people of the land are nomads, travelling from place to place to find the food to feed their herds of goats, sheep and camels. Their origins are in desert regions. On the outskirts of remote areas.//This residency gives opportunities to be able to have, at the same time, a global vision and a local one of territories and cultures so distant but similar. The complexity of the desert. The essence of the desert. From 400 to 300 millions years ago Tissardmine was off the northern coast of Africa, submerged under a body of water known as the Rheic ocean.
