NASO Interviews: Kaïs Dhifi
On Forging Myths in Metal
“This dynamic tension between precision and imperfection defines his practice. Each piece becomes an odyssey in metal, both mechanical and poetic.”
On Kaïs
Born and based in the realm of Metalia, Kaïs describes himself as both wanderer and forger, an artisan of myth who divides his time between crafting artifacts and exploring the rocky desert that composes his world. His practice, deeply rooted in self-taught curiosity, is less a career than a fateful path.
“If full-time means dedicating one’s entire energy to expressing existence through art,” he once said, “then I have walked that path since 2020, without overthinking it.”
It is this sense of unpremeditated devotion that defines Kaïs’s approach, a journey guided not by ambition but by providence.
On Mediterranean Identity
Though he speaks of Metalia, Kaïs’s universe is grounded in the typology of his territory. Yet, for him, the Mediterranean is not a natural border but a single, continuous island of cultures. “Tunis lies on the southern shore, Marseille on the northern,” he reflects, “moving between them is simply crossing the island.”
This fluid sense of belonging shapes his visual language: fragments of myth stripped of context and function, recomposed into new narratives. “Where the journey ends, myth begins,” he explains. The rupture between lived experience and symbolic transposition gives rise to what he calls Metalia, a poetic counter-mythology, a “shared neo-folklore” built from both memory and vision.
On The Alchemy of Time
Kaïs’s work sits at the intersection of archaeology and fiction. For him, the dialogue between ancient gesture and speculative technology is not an aesthetic exercise but a secular pursuit. “What the eye sees, the hand remembers,” he notes. “The vernacular is charged with human experience, while technology allows us to transcend limitation.”
Citing Arthur C. Clarke’s dictum that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Kaïs locates art precisely in that liminal space between wonder and knowledge. His creations appear as artifacts from a past, lost, or yet-to-come civilization, objects that invite viewers to question their own sense of time and memory.
His atelier motto captures the essence of this vision: Rien n’est vrai, tout est permis — “Nothing is real, everything is permitted.” It is both an invitation and a declaration, suggesting that perception itself is the most reliable form of truth.
On The Metal That Remembers
Among the many materials he has explored, aluminum occupies a central role in Kaïs’s visual and symbolic lexicon. “Aluminum presented itself to me,” he says, “and in a way, it was also awaited.” As a child fascinated by engineering and space exploration, he now fulfills that dream metaphorically, building his own vessels inspired of aerospace techniques.
Lightweight yet unforgiving, aluminum records every touch and every error. “It is a living material,” he explains. “By understanding and accepting it, the relationship began to soften.” This dynamic tension between precision and imperfection defines his practice. Each piece becomes an odyssey in metal, both mechanical and poetic.
On His Work
One of Kaïs’s most striking works, My Delicate Orchard, stands apart in his oeuvre for its use of color, vivid car-paint accents applied to etched aluminum. The work originated from a poem of the same name, an invocation that transformed into a shared visual offering:
From the smell only left the name
Dusk of sweetness in a terrible den
With no desire fear shall never flourish pain
To fade, aflame and gather again
The piece’s floral and serpentine motifs evoke both tenderness and transformation, a synthesis of the organic and the industrial, the lyrical and the metallic.
On Process
Inside his atelier, time seems to dissolve. There are no clocks, mirrors, or networks, only the rhythm of the hand and the hum of creation. “Each piece is crafted in an almost uninterrupted session of mindfulness,” Kaïs explains.
From freehand sketches on raw metal sheets to the final act of riveting, his process is both physical and spiritual. The rivets themselves, hundreds or sometimes thousands, become meditative marks of closure. “The subtlety lies in feeling when to stop,” he says.
For Kaïs, metalwork is a kind of irreversible painting where light itself is the final brushstroke, the revealer of form, emotion, and mystery.
On Next Steps
With exhibitions spanning Tunis, Dubai, Brussels, and Lyon, Kaïs has increasingly brought Metalia into dialogue with the wider world. Yet he insists that global exposure has not altered his vision. “It refines my methodology,” he says, “but never my intent.”
In 2024, his monumental Metalia Sound System, a 3.5-meter-high metallic sonic installation, was unveiled at the Fête des Lumières in Lyon. The project tested not only the technical limits of his craft but also the collaborative spirit essential to public art.
Looking ahead, he is developing Metalia Shelters, a series of land-art installations designed to merge with desert landscapes. These “plural experiences,” as he calls them, are less sculptures than thresholds, spaces where creation, myth, and environment converge.