In ‘Octogone’, garments become sculptural archives through which the French-Iranian artist explores migration, masculinity, protest and the politics of the body.
10 September 2026
Chalisée Naamani understands clothing as more than something worn. It is an image, a social code and a vessel for histories that move across bodies, borders and generations. Her vêtements-images bring textiles, family photographs, political symbols and popular culture into layered compositions that exist between garment, painting and sculpture.
Speaking with ART AFRICA, Naamani reflects on the Iranian Zurkhaneh as a space of physical and moral formation, the influence of motherhood on her practice, and the possibilities of collage in a world saturated with images. Through these intersections, ‘Octogone’ asks how identity is constructed, inherited and continually transformed.
Suzette Bell-Roberts: You describe your practice as transforming garments into vêtements-images, where clothing evolves into sculpture, archive, and political language. In ‘Octogone’, how does this metamorphosis from wearable item to symbolic object open up new creative possibilities?
Chalisée Naamani: My vêtements-images borrow the structure of clothing, but I compose them both sculpturally and pictorially. Sculpturally, because I work with volume, shapes and accessories, and pictorially in the way a painter might compose a painting — through combinations of colours, textures, patterns and images. The garment becomes a surface for composing images, but one that has volume and occupies space. In a way, we also dress ourselves with images. What we wear produces an image of us, but clothing can also literally carry images. There is this back and forth: can we dress ourselves in images? In ‘Octogone’, this relationship to the body is reinforced through sport. Sport is very present in the exhibition through its clothing, equipment, gestures and rituals. All of these elements evoke the body even when the body itself is absent. Sportswear and sports equipment immediately suggest movement, effort, repetition, sweat. The body is never represented directly, but it is constantly present through its traces and through the objects and images that surround it. The vêtement-image exists somewhere between painting, sculpture and clothing, while always maintaining this connection to the body.
Within the exhibition, personal memories intertwine with collective histories of migration, protest, and cultural exchange. How do you weave together your own story and political themes so that each enriches the other without overshadowing?
Personal and collective histories are already mixed in the way I experience things, and my way of working is very close to collage. I make associations between forms, colours, objects and images, but also between ideas and histories. One element can lead to another quite intuitively, and then research creates further connections. In that sense, I collage forms, but I also collage ideas. Collage also has a political history — you can think of Dada, for instance, and the way existing images were cut apart and recomposed to question the world they came from. This idea of producing a new meaning simply by putting existing elements into a different relationship still feels very relevant today. In a way, this is also how images reach us now, particularly through social media. The algorithm creates its own kind of collage. On my Instagram feed, I can scroll from a koala to the Kardashian family, and then to the latest contemporary art exhibition at an institution in Paris or Tokyo. These completely different realities are presented on the same surface, one after another, and inevitably start to create associations. I often describe this experience as very baroque — a world of endless perspectives, where images from completely different contexts coexist, overlap and constantly produce new relationships. In ‘Octogone’, a personal memory can exist next to a political image, sport next to motherhood, or an Iranian reference next to something from popular culture. Putting these things next to each other doesn’t mean saying they are equivalent. Collage allows these different things to coexist while keeping their own complexity.
The exhibition draws on the Zurkhaneh as both a physical space and a symbol of resistance, while also challenging its entrenched gender traditions. What inspired you to select this site as the foundation for ‘Octogone’, and how did you reimagine its significance within your work?
The architecture of the space at Palais de Tokyo was the starting point. The room had a very particular atmosphere, and the steps leading down into it made me think of the octagonal pit of a zurkhaneh, where varzesh-e pahlavani is traditionally practised. That connection led me to research its architecture, rituals and history more deeply. What fascinated me was the conception of masculinity I discovered there, because it immediately reminded me of my grandfather. He was a wrestler and a boxer and spent a lot of time training in these kinds of gyms. As I researched the zurkhaneh, I realised that many of the values I associated with him actually came from this culture. His ideal of masculinity was not only about physical strength, but also about humility, courage, justice, respect and protecting the vulnerable. I recognised in these values the way he understood what it meant to be a man. The fact that the zurkhaneh is traditionally a male space is also important. I wanted to look at what can be positive about a place where men come together and transmit these values to one another. There is something almost chivalric about it: strength is not enough in itself; it comes with a moral responsibility towards others. This question of transmission became even more personal because I recently became a mother to a son. This created a generational line in the exhibition, from my grandfather to my son, and made me think about what it means to raise a boy today. What values do we transmit? How do we construct an idea of what it means to become a man? At the same time, I was watching my son discover his own body — learning to move, balance, coordinate and repeat gestures. This created a very natural connection with sport, where the body also learns through movement, repetition and imitation. The octagon started to embody this connection. It refers to the arena where the athletes train, but it also made me think of what in French we call a tapis d’éveil — literally an “awakening mat,” where a baby begins to discover movement, sensations and their own body. I like the word éveil because, in a very different way, the zurkhaneh is also a place of learning and awakening: a place where the body is trained, but where values are transmitted too. So the same form connects two very different moments of learning: the very beginning of discovering and inhabiting a body, and a space where men traditionally train both physically and morally. My perspective is inevitably that of a woman, and now a mother, looking at this traditionally male environment. The work happens in this crossing of perspectives — between my grandfather and my son, between generations, and between different ways of learning how to inhabit a body and become a man.
Your work often brings together objects and symbols that have journeyed across borders, such as the Boteh Jeghe motif, luxury logos, souvenirs, and protest images. What attracts you to visual languages that travel, transform, and sometimes shed their original context?
Images, motifs and objects are never completely stable. They travel, and in travelling they transform. I’m drawn to the moment when I recognise something I thought belonged to one place or one culture, and then discover it somewhere else, in another form and with another history. This happened while I was researching the boteh jegheh for ‘Octogone’. I had always perceived it as a very Persian motif, and then I began to follow its different journeys and transformations. The same happened with textiles: I would start from something familiar to me from Iran and find related forms in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia or North Africa. Suddenly, what seemed very specific to one place became part of a much larger visual history. Textiles travel with people. They are worn, carried, exchanged, traded, copied, adapted and passed on. They absorb these journeys. So when you look at a motif, you may actually be looking at layers of different places, periods and cultures at once. That is also why the hybridisation of cultures feels very natural to me. It is not necessarily a matter of consciously taking something from one culture and mixing it with another. The objects themselves are often already hybrid. Their histories are made of encounters. Contemporary images do the same thing, but at an incredible speed. A logo, a protest image or a souvenir can suddenly appear thousands of kilometres away from where it originated and acquire another meaning. I like following these transformations — seeing what changes, what disappears, and what somehow survives.
In ‘Octogone’, you weave together references to the Women, Life, Freedom movement, the Yellow Vests, and other public protests, alongside personal family archives and reflections on motherhood. How do these varied experiences shape and inform one another within your work?
This relates quite closely to what I was saying about collage. I don’t really try to bring these things together — they coexist because they are all part of the reality and the images that surround me. Of course, I don’t see these different political movements as equivalent; they come from very different contexts. But their images can coexist in the work alongside family archives, motherhood or more intimate references, just as they coexist in everyday life. Something collective can suddenly become very personal, and vice versa.
Across your installations, sport, fashion, childhood, work, and care blend together rather than remaining apart. What do these intersections reveal about the ways societies construct ideas of discipline, gender, and identity?
The body is never only something individual or biological; it is also social and political. It is where many forms of discipline become visible — through the way we are taught to dress, behave, move or occupy space. Gender and identity are constructed through these codes, but also through the possibility of resisting or transforming them. I was recently rereading Paul B. Preciado’s An Apartment on Uranus, and it brought me back to this idea of the body as a political space — something that is constantly being defined, regulated and transformed by the society around it. Clothing sits directly between the body and the social world. It can reveal gender, class, belonging or cultural identity, but it can also disturb these categories. The same garment can be perceived very differently depending on who wears it, where and at what moment in history — but perhaps most importantly, depending on who is looking at it. This is also why I bring together things that are usually separated. Categories such as masculine and feminine, private and public, work and care are not as stable as they appear. They are constructed and learned, which also means they are capable of shifting. Perhaps these crossings and juxtapositions come quite naturally to me because of my experience of diaspora. For me, it means growing up with different cultures, references and histories layered on top of one another. This idea of layering — rather than having to choose one identity or one perspective — is very present in the way I work.
Your work often employs appropriation, quotation, and collage, fusing images from social media, vintage textiles, family photos, and commercial brands. In a world saturated with images, how can artists create work that remains both thoughtful and emotionally resonant?
What interests me most is telling stories. We are surrounded by images, but ultimately what matters is the meaning an image carries, and how that meaning can change depending on its context. I collect images from very different sources — social media, family archives, fashion, political images, things I photograph myself — without really establishing a hierarchy between them. An image can seem completely banal and suddenly become important because of the story attached to it, or because of the way it is placed next to another image. I can crop an image, print it on textile, enlarge a detail or combine it with something from a completely different context. Through these operations, I’m not necessarily trying to make the image more emotional, but to see what other story it can tell. An image is never just an image, and a garment is never just a garment. They both carry stories, memories and meanings. Fashion is inseparable from History, but also from the individual stories of the people who wear it. That’s probably why I like bringing garments and images together — they are both ways of telling stories.
This exhibition is on view at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen in St. Gallen until 13 September 2026. This exhibition was organised in cooperation with Palais de Tokyo, Paris and Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna.
