The Ultra-Baroque Sculptures of Chalisée Naamani

‘Fashion is instant language,’ designer Miuccia Prada said in a 2007 interview with The Wall Street Journal. Artist Chalisée Naamani takes up the garment’s expressive power in her ‘vêtements-images’ (clothing-images), as she terms them: assemblages that incorporate reclaimed apparel and accessories to achieve a form of soft sculpture stripped of wearability. In these works, second-hand items are remixed as striking, impractical surfaces and allusive amalgamations – a process the Palais de Tokyo in Paris equated with the ‘ultra-Baroque aesthetics of Instagram’ in the museum notes accompanying an exhibition by the artist this summer. Naamani mines the art of getting dressed to address questions around the performativity of identity and the turmoil of global consumerism. The labels inside the clothes she has refashioned state ‘Made with Love’ – which, within the exploitative world of modern fashion production, seems less like a pious promise than the branding equivalent of an ironic smile. 

‘Goodwill’, the title of Naamani’s solo exhibition at Ciaccia Levi’s Paris space, references the US-based non-profit organization best known for its second-hand shops; a visible tag bearing the store’s name hangs from the artist’s installation Sleepover (all works 2025). Many of the repurposed elements in the show, which comprises four works, feature motifs from Persian textiles, drawn from the Franco-Iranian artist’s diasporic heritage. Further, the exhibition is threaded throughout with a bubblegum-pink girlishness as well as a variety of twee, earnest Americana (too benign to match the ugly political reality of today). Take Born to Be a Princess, which consists of a repurposed hoodie proclaiming that ‘BOYS LIE’, sewn to a pink quilt printed with images of Disney’s Ariel and Cinderella. Stitched to the side is a beaded kilim rug, while a pair of plastic, bow-adorned shoes sit on the floor beneath. The kitschy, juvenile items wedded to the rug’s historic boteh jegheh (paisley) design creates aesthetic friction, reflecting the incongruous spectrum of influences that can shape a young woman. On the opposite wall, a child-size holster hangs from a shoe tree, the bright fuchsia grip of a toy pistol peeking out (You’ll Grow Into It). Below, rose-printed socks spill from a pair of embroidered adult cowboy boots. The work presents a femininized and youthified version of the iconography of the lawless American Western, a candy-coloured vision of violence seemingly drained of threat; yet its title anticipates a latent brutality for which the plastic toy functions as a mere stand-in.

Occupying the centre of the space is a free-standing folding screen – part of the aforementioned installation Sleepover – that feels less like a chic boudoir divider than a harsh cleaving mechanism. Slung over it is a striped bathrobe, its lining enthusiastically printed with the slogan ‘DO MORE of what makes YOU HAPPY’. On the floor in front, a clothes storage case houses a haphazardly arranged selection of items, including a camouflage-print garment bag ornamented with bejewelled, intertwined Cs (which are clearly not authentic Chanel) and a shirt repeatedly emblazoned with the word ‘USA’, customized with plastic cowboy-boot buttons. The reverse side of the screen features a blown out, blurry print of a tapestry or carpet, edged with metal studs. A small piece of lace-trimmed fabric is pinned to it, printed with a lament: ‘I held an atlas in my lap / ran my hand across the whole / world / and whispered / where does it hurt? / it answered / everywhere’. The sense of alarm evident in these words reframes the garments on display: suddenly, we feel their inability to conceal the wounds that pulsate beneath. The frippery of fashion can be sassy, indulgent, discursive – but there is dormant disquiet nestled beneath the surface.

Chalisée Naamani’s ‘Goodwill’ is on view at Ciaccia Levi, Paris, until 11 October

^{Main image: Chalisée Naamani, Sleepover (detail), 2025, installation view. Courtesy: the artist and Ciaccia Levi, Paris/Milan; photograph: © Aurélien Mole}