Mehdi Ben Cheikh. Djerbahood: Open Air Museum of Street Art
- Book review by Brooklyn Street Art
- Martha Cooper Library
- MCL
- January 5, 2026
Djerbahood: Open Air Museum of Street Art. Mehdi Ben Cheikh. 2015
If Tour Paris 13 was the demolition swan song of an era, Djerbahood may feel like an expansive sunrise on the other side of the world. Conceived by gallerist and curator Mehdi Ben Cheikh and realized in the whitewashed village of Erriadh on the island of Djerba, Tunisia, this project gathered more than one hundred artists from thirty countries to create what Ben Cheikh calls a “museum à ciel ouvert”—an open-air museum under the North African sun. The resulting book, published by Albin Michel, offers a monumental visual record of this transformation: 500 photographs across 272 pages, documenting walls, artists, and villagers in a rare moment of collective creation.
In these images, the desert light hits walls like paper. Works by eL Seed, ROA, Pantonio, Phlegm, Jaz, Fintan Magee, Curiot, Inti, and Sebas Velasco coexist with local architecture—white domes, low arches, latticed shadows—turning the town into a living gallery. As Brooklyn Street Art observed in its review, Djerbahood “absorbs your mind and imagination, giving you a sense of the place and the people who live there.” It’s true: the book’s pacing—half atlas, half photo-essay—lets readers wander through alleys as if following the scent of plaster and sea air.
Cultural producer and commercial art dealer, Ben Cheikh’s introduction and interviews reveal a deeply intentional act of revitalization. Following Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, he envisioned art as a way to recast Erriadh’s identity—to awaken a town “that had fallen into lethargy,” as he told UNESCO. The project gave residents a renewed sense of pride, and, for a time, the village became a global destination. Djerbahood doesn’t flatten its complexity. It registers the tension between commerce and community, tourism and authenticity, spectacle and substance. Some critics saw the choices of artists a curated export of urban cool; others, as a genuine cultural exchange. The book gives both readings space to breathe.
Design-wise, the thick hardcover is as polished as any European art annual. The spirit and personality of the book may be reveale by its textures—cracked limewash, sun-faded paint, and everyday street scenes (often children and families) moving through the alleys. The subjects feel universal use selected imagery respectful of local norms.The bilingual text (French and English) opens the project to an international audience while anchoring it in Tunisian context, echoing the polyglot nature of the art itself.
Djerbahood is, above all, one snapshot of possibility: how a small town may become a crossroads for global street art, and how that encounter left a mark that time and salt air will struggle to erase. In the words of Ben Cheikh, the project proved “that any place in the world can become, at some point, the capital of street art—even if it’s located at the far end of an island.”
Text Steven P. Harrington & Jaime Rojo Fotos Eveline Wilson