Despair, 2025

Zied Lasram  

Born in 1962 in Tunisia, Zied Lasram grew up in the sacred village of Sidi Bou Saïd, among saints, poets, and cats—completely indifferent to the hordes of tourists to whom he sold his watercolors. It was there that he opened his first studio—“a lair of encounters," as his friend Mahmoud Chalbi describes it, “where passing princesses, poet-artists, village eccentrics, bourgeois souls in search of belonging, and enlightened spirits from all horizons would mingle."

In 1991, he obtained a Master's degree in Art Sciences and Techniques, with a specialization in Graphic Design, at the Institut Technologique d'Art d'Architecture et d'Urbanisme de Tunis.

But this dreamer has ants in his brush. He multiplies his stops, moving from studio to studio—from La Soukra to La Marsa, then to Gammarth—until he finally arrives in Djerba, where, as he well knows, the air is so gentle it keeps one from dying. More importantly, it is where he finds the peace and serenity he had always lacked.

It was in some obscure ornithology manual that he discovered the bird Calliste: a bird that resembles him—joyful, delightfully colorful, with a shimmering beauty that enchants and a song that is pure poetry.

That is Zied Lasram: a free spirit who knows no boundaries of time or space, an artist from a bohemia that no longer exists—not even in the art world. A talented visual artist, he seeks, discovers, changes course, and returns to a path he never consciously chose, but which is unmistakably his own.

There, on that blissful island—an indistinct universe open to the wide winds, on the edge of the real and the imaginary—Zied Lasram creates a world where flower-women speak with whistling birds, in an enchanted Eden. As dreamlike as his inspiration may be, Zied Lasram nevertheless maintains a mastery of line, technical ease, fluid movement, and a delicacy of color. Calliste, his companion, is a bird that suits him perfectly.

He has been collaborating with the Tobian Art Gallery since 2025. He has exhibited in France, Switzerland, Italy, and Tunisia, and has participated in the Art Fair in Basel. His work is part of private collections around the world.