Mosaic belongs to our cultural heritage, and it still holds its own today. A portrait of Mehdi Benedetto, worthy heir to the mosaicists of old, raised between France and Tunisia and Italian by descent.
How did Mehdi Benedetto come to mosaic?
Born in Tunis in 1974 and drawn to drawing and decoration from childhood, he graduated from the École d’art et de décoration in Tunis. He worked as an assistant set decorator for Tunisian cinema and theatre, then joined an Italian marquetry and marble-carving workshop in 1997. Stone caught him there and never let go. In 1998 he opened his own studio, explored constructed sculpture and mosaic painting, and found in the work of Gustav Klimt material he could translate into micro-mosaic of marble and semi-precious stones, faithful to the painter’s own colours.
In 2001 he was named one of Tunisia’s three finest artist-craftsmen and showed at the SEMA gallery, Viaduc des Arts, in Paris. In 2004 he met Leila Menchari, artistic director of the house of Hermès, and in 2004, 2005 and 2014 he worked on the luxury house’s autumn window.
What has marked his career? (interview recorded in December 2014)
“I’m a mosaic artist, in love with stone, and I try to give it a new way of being read,” is how he describes himself. Among the encounters that shaped him he names Lize Bisgart and Luciano Malazzani at Artémis, Leila Menchari at Hermès — a collaboration of more than ten years — and the Almadanya Foundation, which helped carry his work abroad.
That year he was selected for “Imago Mundi”, the travelling international exhibition of the Luciano Benetton Foundation, and took part in “Turbulences”, a project gathering 150 to 200 artists Tunisian or living in Tunisia, with a work of 10 x 12 m shown in Rome. He also taught at the French school in La Soukra, where children made a collective piece of 2 x 1.20 m, and entered the GemlucArt contemporary art competition in Monaco — a foundation chaired by the Princess of Hanover for the fight against cancer — mixing several techniques for the first time.
Where does mosaic stand in Tunisia today?
“Mosaic is too often filed under antiquity,” he says with regret. He would like Tunisian mosaicists to open newer, more contemporary paths while keeping a share of the country’s identity in the work. He praises the Bardo Museum and the wealth of its collection, and notes that production today still leans mostly on reproducing ancient mosaics, at the El Djem site above all.
On what makes a mosaic good: “distance is what tells you — seen from far off, it should almost look like a painting, the tesserae barely visible”. A good mosaicist, he says, has to be patient above all, then delicate in execution, and passionate.
None of this would be possible without a passion for what you do.Mehdi Benedetto
