I’m not sure what it meant to see the philosophers’ faces on the wall. It was late afternoon, 20 steps behind a downtown Tunis train station. By that week, I’d begun to recognize the call of the heat in the morning. I stood in the shade. I’d been meaning to get to the site of this artwork for a long time. There was then, as there’s now, an anticipation, a sense of distance before the gravel, cement and metal where the interrelation between art and revolution, between philosophy and revolution, was so obvious it didn’t need to be understood.

The artwork at Bab Saadoun was erected by graffiti group Ahl El Kahf during the Tunisian Revolution December - January 2011. Photos were taken June 2011 and depict portraits of Edward Said, Antonio Negri, Mohmad Chokri and Gilles Deleuze. 

From Kathleen Powers