The French National Assembly has passed a bill to return 27 colonial-era artefacts to their countries of origin. The draft law will now head to the senate; if approved, it will require the return of 26 works that were looted from the palace of Abomey in present-day Benin, and a sword that belonged to the 19th-century leader Omar Saïdou Tall, who once ruled in what is now Senegal. The artefacts from Benin are currently held in the Musée du Quai-Branly in Paris, while the sword has since 2019 been on loan from the Musée des l’Armée to the Musée des Civilisations Noires in Dakar.
Once a place where sea, desert, and palm groves coexisted in rare harmony, Tunisia’s Gabès Oasis stands today as one of the world’s most fragile cultural-environmental sites. At its heart is artist Mohamed Amine Hamouda, whose ecological practice offers a form of resistance—one built on memory, materials, and a return to ancestral knowledge.