Statement:

In The Portraits, Iranian artist Golnaz Payani reflects on the act of hanging portraits: are these images memorials of the past, or witnesses of the present?

The exhibition presents woven works using antique frames, transforming the wall into a ritual space where memory, trace, and presence coexist. 

Shaped by Payani’s childhood in Tehran during the Iran–Iraq war and her later migration to France, the work explores disappearance, perception, and the fragility of memory—allowing the trace to exist independently from its origin.