Chalisée Naamani

In a research where painting, sculpture, popular culture, fashion and technology intersect, becoming a fertile ground for cultural intertwining and linguistic exchange, Chalisée Naamani’s works are the result of a process that combines photographic prints with polymateric assemblages in soft, irregular shapes, which in space draw gateways to rebuses and emotional tangles. The Iranian-origin French artist meditates on the political, cultural and evocative power of fashion, on its ability to pay «homage to history, and to the stories of the women and men who wear it», to quote the words of philosopher Marie-Aude Baronian. In fact, as Naamani explains, «I do not choose clothes for aesthetic reasons alone. I try to tell stories through shapes, colours and suitable accessories. I obsessively archive images taken from everyday life, screenshots and scans that I then combine to create new ones». Between the folds of sculptures that have lost their geometric rationality, centred or collapsed in on themselves, peep familiar images from the artist's personal archive, Middle Eastern iconography, trap quotations, screensaver panoramas and digital collages. Everything overlaps and interlocks, as in an eternal scrolling, giving shape to a serial imagery populated by bold baroque outcomes and a continuous practice of construction and deconstruction. Stratifications of materials and experiences —virtual and real, spiritual and physical— inextricably intertwine. ...