Café Bourouissa

In this room, everyone is welcome: to read, rest, sit down, think, play, talk with others, or do homework. Since 2023, we have offered this space within the museum as a public place in the heart of Zurich’s District 5, free from any obligation to consume or engage in specific activities. Complimentary tea and water are always available. At times, the space is also used for events and workshops.

As part of his solo exhibition Pour Noubia in summer 2026, artist Mohamed Bourouissa redesigned this room. In doing so, he drew on recurring elements and themes from his artistic practice, including a reference to a clinic in his hometown of Blida, Algeria, which has long been a focus of his research. There, in the 1950s, physician and anti-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon established a café that served as an open space for gathering and social exchange. This initiative formed part of Fanon’s efforts, as head of the psychiatric department, to reform both everyday life within the clinic and the Western treatment methods that shaped it.

For the redesign, Bourouissa took inspiration from this history and from the atmosphere of Algerian cafés as places of encounter where people gather, linger, and spend time together. Quotations from the French edition of Conversations with My Soul II (Conversations avec mon âme II), a text by writer and painter Etel Adnan published in 2012, have been engraved into the walls. The text consists of a collection of inner dialogues and personal observations in which many of us can recognise aspects of ourselves. The engravings also reveal the different layers of paint that have covered the room over time, making visible the traces of its transformation.

Café Bourouissa is open to everyone. We kindly ask all visitors to treat the space and one another with respect.

P.S. Coffee is available next door at Bistro LOI.