Chrif and Fatma, Adam and Eve, Me and Mehdi, so many couples in my head.

Each couple united by a story. The first men and women of humanity, painting for my little couple and Chrif and Fatma? What united them? Love? Love of the land? from Kabylie? the war ? a common enemy? Fatma is LALLA FATMA N'SOUMER, a name that has caused ink to flow, created poems, that has made men and women tremble, a name that has given hope and made the Algerian woman a warrior , a moudjahida, a name that makes you want to fight for your freedom, for the love of your land and your people, for the freedom of being.

The story goes that she was an attipic, strong woman, a woman who refused to submit to customs and traditions. She rose up against the French enemy who wanted to snatch their land, Kabylie. A woman ! I never would have thought that.

History meets us far too often with stories of men but not many women that I/we can identify with.

Long before the war of liberation was Fatma N'Soumer. She was born in 1830 in Ouerdja, Kabylie and died at the age of 33. He is a figure of the Algerian resistance movement during the first years of the conquest of Algeria by France, but not only that, his story began long before.

He was given the name Lalla as an honorary title and mark of respect. Lalla Fatma N'Soumer is considered a saint. She has chosen devotion and meditation and is gradually establishing herself in the world of mediation and politico-religious consultation, hitherto reserved for men.

Chrif or Chérif Boubaghla is also an Algerian resistance fighter from the beginnings of the French conquest of Algeria. He is known to have been the initiator of the popular revolt bearing his nickname in August 1851, against French colonization in the region of Djurdjura (Grande Kabylie) which he extended after his alliance with Lalla Fatma N'soumer.

He was born in 1820 into a family of scholars and Islamic scholars.

He was given the name "Our Sultan" because of his bravery in battle and his greatness of soul, or even Abou-Seïf "the man with the sword" and Boubaghla "father of the mule". It is said that he was part of the Siafas "Red Cavaliers" of the Emir Abdelkader.

Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux’s painting “Presumed Portraits of Chérif Boubaghla and Lalla Fatma n’Soumer” (Fig 2) depicts a scene from history, the story of these two characters. We see the two protagonists accompanied by a group of men on horses. What interests me and challenges me in this painting is not the history painting but the representation of these two main characters of the scene,

Chérif Boubaghla and Lalla Fatma n'Soumer. the only two characters who look at each other, a complicity between them, a discussion by the look, a contradiction or a complementarity also by the colors, but one element jumps out at me "the age of the two characters", one seems very old white beard, he looked like a 70-year-old man and she was young in her 20s. I'm going to do my research as usual, I realize that he was only 10 years apart in age. question comes to me: why represent them like this?

I continue my research and I realize that there are very few representations of her two characters and the rare representations of Fatma N'soumer are like a young Berber warrior who recalls Joan of Arc, moreover the French l have often associated with the latter, as for the representations of Chrif Boubaghla are for the most part either a head on a spade, an old man which he has never reached, or images which recall the various portraits of the emir abdelkader (standing, sitting, on a horse).

In my painting (Fig 1) I wanted like the paintings of the Emir Abdelkader or the Moudjahidates to create an environment far from us and our frozen gaze. I painted them in a garden, their garden with two sacred trees, the fig tree and the olive tree. A serene environment.