My Name is Dhouha MAATOUG, born in 1989, In Tunisia. Since a young age, I expressed my self through painting and drawing and Photography has been a natural evolution to my creative flow.
Before turning thirty, I decided to start a new chapter in my life and pursue my passion for the Arts.
In 2019, I came to Paris to study Photography at Speos International photography school, specialized in studio (2019-2021). This gave me the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of the photographic practice while being immersed in a culture different from mine.
My artistic signature is influenced by my creative background as an Artist : I like to print , scan , draw and paint on my images ; an ode to self-discovery while exploring the blurred lines between different mediums , questioning the definition of photography and what I can do with it to realize my vision.

Static Emotion

With this series, I explore the concept of movement, with a process of cutting and pasting of different pictures, I create an alternative human portrait in a single frame. With each portrait, the collage process gets more elaborate and complex, leaving me with a’ mirage like’ result while trying to evoke the complexity of the human emotions through this process.

Ways of Seeing

At the crossroads of photography , painting and Arabic calligraphic writing , I stage the female body in my series- ways of seeing- to explore body image , intimacy and the western culture from eastern perspective of my Arab Islamic culture . Dressed only with a silk cloth, called ‘sefseri’ -which is a large piece of cloth ,that Tunisian women used to wear in the past , to cover the whole body out of modesty in order to ovoid male looks – my model blossoms without a fear and dare to reveal herself in front of the lens,. This put me in a task of reflection about the beliefs hidden in my subconscious mind on the constraints inherited from my generational lineage towards my self-image as a woman . My artistic process of this series starts with physical ‘editing’ on a monochromatic prints through painting , carving and writings to reveal and unravel what I think and feel about myself as a woman , taking my model as a medium that shows me everything I see different to my cultural identity . Later on, I use Photoshop to merge the original pictures with these monochromatic versions to create an alternative character in my story. Between Tattoos and Arabic letters , skin and cloth , BW and colors , hide and reveal , I seek to create an alternative version of how I see myself . The heart of- ways of seeing- is a permission of self-discovery, combining opposite cultural symbols and beliefs to create a parallel reality of my self-perception as an Arab woman in the west.