The Journey of the Arabesques

2015–2025. Our initiatives, which began with the partnership signed on April 25, 2015, between the cities of Oran and Strasbourg, were initially led by the PasSages association and expanded in 2019 with the creation of the Rue Méditerranée association. Ten exhibitions, numerous meetings, and joint residencies have marked our path, supported by the City of Strasbourg and the Wilaya of Oran, the French Institute of Oran, ENSAS, the School of Architecture of the University of Oran, the Madinati Review, the Strasbourg Mediterranean Festival, Apollonia, the Art Course, the Zone d'Art, and numerous partners.

The challenge remains: to use culture to facilitate a respectful dialogue open to civic initiatives. This edition, centered on Mediterranean gardens, is both a call to our imagination as the foundation of creation and a call to a utopia of plural identities. In recent years, the Mediterranean has mobilised us amid the chaos of deadly violence and given us hope in the right of peoples to live in freedom.