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29 January 2026

Body, Garment, Resistance: Fashion.at at the Artist Talk with Chalisée Naamani

Installation view of Chalisée Naamani’s exhibition 'Octogone' at Kunsthalle Wien, showing image-garments and a large wall projection.

Fashion, Body and Politics

On 28 January 2026, fashion.at attended the artist talk with Chalisée Naamani at Kunsthalle Wien, held shortly before the opening of her exhibition Octogone. The conversation took place between the artist and Noit Banai, Professor for Diaspora Aesthetics at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and was conducted in English.

In the talk, Naamani addressed the political dimension of fashion and the body, with a brief reference to the current situation in Iran. "Fashion is political. The body is political," she said, situating her work in a context where appearance, movement and self-expression are closely linked to power and control. The exhibition marks Naamani's first major solo show outside of France. Prior to its opening in Vienna, there was an artist talk that framed the works through questions of diaspora, resistance, and cultural continuity.

Diaspora as Layered Experience

Banai began the discussion with reflections on diaspora aesthetics, describing it as an experience shaped by departure, displacement and multiple forms of belonging. Against common expectations of exile as rupture or fragmentation, Naamani appeared as an artist whose world is not divided but composed of layered cultural realities. Persian, European and American references coexist in her practice, not as opposites but as accumulated experiences.

Rather than presenting diaspora as loss, Naamani described it as a condition of awareness: an understanding that cultural traditions are not erased, but continue to exist under pressure and can re-emerge through struggle. Her work reflects this persistence through material layering, printing, assembling and re-contextualising images and objects.

Octogone, Movement and Memory

The exhibition title Octogone refers to the octagonal training space of the Zurkhaneh, a traditional Iranian gym linked to Varzesh-e Pahlavani, a martial art once suppressed for its revolutionary potential. Naamani spoke about her grandfather, who was a wrestler, and whose photograph appears in her work. One image shows his portrait photographed on a classical Persian carpet, printed on leather and applied to a bag.

Movement emerged as a recurring theme—through sport, travel, trade and migration. The images shown during the talk included trolleys marked with symbols reminiscent of luxury patterns, such as the signature Monogram canvas pattern of Louis Vuitton, as well as a newly produced installation for Vienna: a classic hotel luggage cart carrying an assemblage of apparel and objects. On the cart, two jackets in a loden-like style that evoke traditional Alpine clothing; blouse-like elements printed with ornate gold patterns associated with Baroque high-fashion aesthetics, particularly those popularised by Versace; boxing gloves bearing a Medusa head, a symbol widely used by the Italian fashion house; and a punching bag dressed in the same Baroque gold-and-white ornamental print. At the center of the arrangement hangs a sack-like, printed object in the colors of the Austrian national flag: red, white, and red. It shows a heart with a ruby core surrounded by white pearls and flanked by the two outfits. One features a sweater reading "I love Vienna". Naamani described such city slogans as interchangeable, turning diaspora into a lived, mobile lifestyle rather than a fixed identity.

Chalisée Naamani remembered her lasting impression of the book Ornament and Crime (German: Ornament und Verbrechen) by Austrian architect Adolf Loos, which contextualized ornament in relation to the evolution of modern society. She realized that she had been surrounded by ornaments her whole life.

That evening, the artist herself wore a silk skirt with a paisley pattern, also seen in historical footage of Iranian gym culture. For Naamani, paisley—or cashmere—represents the aesthetics of transit and trade, shaped by long histories of cultural and material exchange.

The motif originates in Persia, where it is known as boteh or buta and traditionally symbolises life and eternity. Its later name, "paisley," emerged in the 19th century after large-scale machine-woven imitations were produced in Paisley, Scotland, and widely circulated in Europe.

Resistance, Visibility and the Exhibition

Naamani's work reflects what diaspora often entails: carrying several cultural layers at once. This is expressed physically through stacked materials and visually through hybrid aesthetics that combine high-fashion references with flea market textures. The result mirrors many migrant biographies shaped by both precarity and cultural wealth.

One of the final images discussed showed a graffiti wall in Iran repeatedly painted over by authorities. Each layer revealed the same message in Farsi: "Resistance is life." Next to this image in the exhibition stands one of Naamani's image-garments, representing those who wrote the slogan. The figure appears in a Chanel couture-like silhouette with a rebellious, intellectual, street-inspired Rive Gauche undertone: a punk-style luxury bodice with a print of two red boxing gloves that, at first glance, resemble a broken heart.

The talk also highlighted the academic framework surrounding the exhibition. The Professorship for Diaspora Aesthetics was established at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2023, and since October 2024 has been held by Noit Banai. Her work examines art shaped by migration, exile and statelessness—contexts closely aligned with Naamani's practice.

The exhibition Chalisée Naamani: Octogone is on view at Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier from 29 January to 6 April 2026.


Image: Installation view Chalisée Naamani: Octogone, From Iran, 2025; You must hide love in the closet (Ahmed Shamlu), 2025, Kunsthalle Wien 2026. Courtesy the artist and Ciaccia Levi, Paris/Milan, © Bildrecht, Wien 2026, photo: Markus Wörgötter