Algiers – The “Artillo” exhibition, organized by photographers Tinhinan Mahdi and Walid Mandi, is currently ongoing in Algiers until August 31. The exhibition highlights the richness of Algeria’s cultural heritage and the grandeur of contemporary architecture in major cities.
Held at the art gallery within the Garden City shopping center in the capital, the exhibition centers on the evolution of humanity and its ability to adapt to and enhance its environment through intellect, thought, and creativity. It showcases how humans have gradually improved their living conditions and added to their personal comfort over time.
The exhibition invites visitors on a visual journey through spaces of history, culture, tradition, and modernity. The duo presents thirty framed works in both black-and-white and color, offering what they describe as a “visual stroll where each photograph tells an eternal story.”
The photographers have successfully created a dialogue between two eras separated by centuries, arranging the exhibition space in a way that places the visitor between two parallel walls, where moments of timeless life unfold. The contrast between the warmth and intimacy of ancient times and traditions with the coldness of skyscrapers and other massive urban structures reflects a type of excessive modernity that has dominated humanity.
Tinhinan Mahdi, who has presented fifteen photographs with a focus on heritage and anthropology, has used intense lighting to create warm and vibrant atmospheres that bring the images to life, emphasizing ancient sites and monuments as well as traditional customs.
Tinhinan, aged 26, combines rationality with aesthetics, drawing on her background in petrochemical engineering and her lifelong passion for the arts, particularly photography.
Walid Mandi, 55, works in project planning and has a degree in fine art photography, a practice he has pursued since 2017. He expresses that capturing life’s moments and the diverse elements of local and foreign societies is, for him, “an endless source of fascination.”
