Et si Carthage...’ drawings brings together an articulated series of works including large-format drawings on structures made of scaffolding-like elements; sculptures formed from plaster casts of objects, bodies and other sculptures, assembled with found objects (from musical instruments to masks); transfers on fabric and on paper; and a rich archive of research materials from books, film and music to an

extensive wall-based cartography of concepts and images — forming together a heterogeneous ensemble in which the fragment and the marginal detail are important.
In the words of the artist speaking of his process of artistic research and assemblage:
‘The elements retain traces of their original worlds and cannot be assimilated into a visual totality. It's a practice of montage that introduces the multiple, the diverse and the hybrid. The images confront, connect and repel each other.’

Filling out his fields of research straddling Mediterranean antiquity to contemporary crossings and exile, is Chamekh’s consideration of how modernity viewed antiquity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when colonial ideology had a profound effect on the writing of the ancient history of Northern Africa and Southern Europe. The affirmation of the Roman presence through interpretations of archaeological traces, underlining its extent and the pervasiveness of its influence, contributed to justifying the French presence and methods in the territories they occupied, and later also the Italian colonial presence. Both positioned themselves as heirs to the Romans, legitimately unfolding their predestination to empire and claiming their rights around the shores of Mare Nostrum, as can be clearly read in Carmine Gallone’s film of the fascist period in Italy Scipione l'Africano (1937).