Armineh Negahdari’s restless drawings unfold between body, memory, and metamorphosis.
29 April 2026
In its latest Open Space iteration, the Fondation Louis Vuitton turns to the charged, unsteady language of drawing with Armineh Negahdari’s first institutional solo exhibition in France. Bringing together a new body of works, the Bordeaux-based artist approaches drawing not as representation, but as an event. Lines do not describe so much as they insist, accumulate, falter, and begin again.
Negahdari’s surfaces hold tension like skin. Charcoal, pastel, and oil paint converge in gestures that oscillate between control and surrender, where repetition becomes a form of endurance. Figures emerge only to dissolve, slipping between human, vegetal, and animal states. A head might tilt toward fruit, a limb unfurl into landscape. These unstable morphologies resist narrative closure, inviting a sustained encounter with flux instead.
What anchors the work is its physical urgency. Drawing here is not preparatory but primary, a way of thinking through the body. Marks’ register hesitates as much as it does with conviction, producing images that feel both vulnerable and defiant. In Negahdari’s hands, the act of drawing becomes a site of transformation, where meaning is never fixed, only felt in motion.
This exhibition is on view at Gallery 8 of the Fondation Louis Vuitton until 30 August 2026.
