Last Updated:
Nov 15, 2004

 

Lihidheb Mohsen was born in 1953 in the fisherman village of Zarzis in the south of Tunisia. He grew up in this small oasis close to the Mediterranean, where the Sahara and the Sea meet; a witness to the differences in social behavior between the agricultural and fishing societies. Qur'anic courses, the official school program, broke the common ethics, but fortunately, he kept the seeds of resistance all along his scholarship and after, in sort of inner struggle against acculturation and assimilation. With the will and hope of the independent generation, he was very receptive to knowledge and world literature. He was also affected by the leftist politics of the time and the invading culture of tourism, but he was able to make it through both while enriching his wisdom, tolerance and love of nature. Meanwhile, he served as a civil servant in the Post office, a press correspondent, political/social activist, psychotherapist and "citizen of the world". He is married, has three children, and speaks, Arabic, French, English and German.  At the age of 40, he decided to give up smoking, drinking, wasting his time with meaningless activities, and to stop watching life as a passive spectator. In 1994, Mohsen decided to go out and reacquaint himself with the sea, to re-forge a connection lost since his early youth. He embraced this new relationship with the sea, sometimes being quite reckless, such as staying on the beaches in 110 degree weather (45 Celsius) or during hurricane-type weather when everyone else is under their blankets. Slowly he came to collect objects he found on the shores of the beach, which has given him both a physical pyramid of over 100,000 bottles and other objects and developing a virtual, mental, and physiological pyramid of acquired thoughts and ideas. These ideas and thoughts inspired him to recycle the thrown away litter he collected and create "Action-Art" sculptures and figures, while also giving several lectures as on the environment, ecology, culture, ethics, recycling, etc. Throughout these experiences and actions he was able to articulate the human intellect and memory by animating things in a correlative philosophical approach. Meanwhile, he has received a Guinness World Record, made a documentary film "Sea Memory", created a Museum in his hometown to display his artwork, and has been featured on TV, Radio, and newspapers from around the world. However, he says that his best award is the joy he gets sharing his passion with visitors and specially schoolchildren. In order to better convey his feelings about, and knowledge learned from his environmental and artistic actions, Mohsen has written 91 poems about birds, turtles, dolphins and humans he has met in his endeavors.  He keeps on going, moving softly, in the communion of body, spirit, space, time, action, and instinct - singing the symphony of life and enjoying what life has to offer.