Professor Anna Rocca (World Languages and Cultures) Published an Article on L’Esprit Créateur-Johns Hopkins University Press

Professor Rocca explores how Tunisian photographer Héla Ammar engages with the LGBT+ rights in her installation entitled À fleur de peau / Body Talks. Ammar portrays seven Tunisian young celebrities, well known by the media for their political activism, with their head concealed under a colorful floral scarf. Because there is often something comforting, even relatable, about seeing a human figure rather than an unfamiliar face, these bodies, Rocca argues, endorse a sympathetic relationship with the audience and a call for a change: from the body as a site of struggle and control to the body as a portal into listening and connection. Héla Ammar’s À fleur de peau / Body Talks: From Anonymous to Familiar Bodies