BIOGRAPHY
Trained as an architect, Myriame Dachraoui’s painting practice considers the psychological and spatial dimensions of domestic life.
Her work explores how interiors shape intimacy, visibility, and control, and how thresholds such as walls, windows, and entrancesinfluence the way we inhabit space
Working primarily in oil on canvas, Dachraoui constructs atmos-pheric interiors and landscapes that move between protection andexposure. Drawing on archival photographs and fragments of livedhistory, she reinterprets and repositions details within her composi-tions, shifting perspective and authorship. Her paintings oftenhoverbetween closeness and distance, inviting the viewer intospacesthat feel at once familiar and guarded
These Walls That Protect Us
“These Walls That Protect Us' is a culmination of my four week residency with Gallery 44. This body of work is a love letter to my family home. These Walls That Protect Usis a name that recalls the traditional Tunisian house, where architecture serves not only to provide shelter, but also to filter the outside gaze.
In the studio, I committed to exploring the classic medium of oil and acrylic on cotton duck canvas. In the domestic space, I turned toward rumination, reading, writing, creating works on paper, and soft fibre pieces. This period allowed a rare harmony, where the two sites, the studio and the home, intertwined and became one continuous space of thought and making.
These walls also shield us from the outside world and from the intrusive gaze - the one that scrutinizes women’s bodies, deciphers our gestures, and decides whether they are, or are not, acceptable within a society still struggling to free itself from patriarchal codes. Yet with every wall, there is always an opening , a window onto something outside. Because this too defines that society, that country: a place where tenderness coexists with our complexities. All of this unfolds within the walls of the family home.”
