Ithaque, in collaboration with Ava Gallery, presents Becoming, a solo exhibition by Iranian artist Atoosa Alebouyeh, bringing together two major photographic series: Me in my point of View (2016) and The Unstable Face (2020).
Through these two bodies of work, Atoosa Alebouyeh develops a reflection on the construction of identity and the intimate experience of a body in flux.
The exhibition traces a path in which the self-portrait becomes a tool for self-exploration, revealing the tensions between perception, vulnerability and the representation of a physical and psychological state.
Atoosa Alebouyeh (born 1993 in Tehran) is a photographer and fine art printing specialist. A graduate in photography from the Islamic Azad University (Art and Architecture), she has developed an artistic practice centred on staged photography since 2012.
Her work explores interiority, memory, vulnerability and emotion through minimalist compositions in which the human body occupies a central place. Her visual language is defined by its restraint, precision and attention to space and silence. The exhibition brings together two series — Me in my point of View and The Unstable Face — in a journey that interrogates the construction of the self, vulnerability and what the body reveals as it changes.
Alongside her artistic practice, she works in the fields of fashion, portrait and commercial photography. Her work has been exhibited across Europe, Asia and the Middle East, and she continues to pursue artistic and professional collaborations internationally.
Ithaque collaborated with Ava Gallery for this occasion. Founded by Ava Ayoubi — founder of Galerie Bavan in Tehran — Ava Gallery is a contemporary art gallery connecting regional and international art scenes. It represents artists from around the world and participates regularly in contemporary art fairs. The gallery champions practices exploring current cultural and social issues. Committed to promoting emerging talent, it also plays an active role in the cultural vitality of the United Arab Emirates.
“Me in my point of view (2016) is a self-portrait of my interiority, my solitude and my intimacy. Each of us constructs a certain circle within which we live.
This circle has precise and well-established rules. I myself created everything that exists within mine. I am the one who made this space comfortable to inhabit, but I am also the one who created the fear of leaving it. Without hesitation, it seems to me wonderful to stop everything and observe oneself in absolute silence.”
“The Unstable Face (2020). For five years, I avoided looking at my face two days every month. Before each menstruation, a temporary swelling would appear, a numbness and a strange gaze, which disappeared with the first bleeding.
Rather than concealing this brief metamorphosis, I decided to confront it and use an analogue camera to seek a face removed from established standards of beauty. What I found there was not ugliness, but a deep honesty — a truth that society teaches us not to speak of.
This medical condition ceased after the COVID pandemic, but the self-portraits remain: testimonies to the instability of the face and the courage required to look at this ephemeral ‘self’.
This series reveals my face for the first time: a proliferation of faces of which none is quite me, and each of which could nonetheless be precisely my own ‘self’.” — Atoosa Alebouyeh
Atoosa Alebouyeh : Becoming
July 2–25, 2026
Ithaque
5, Rue des Haudriettes
75003 Paris
www.ithaque-paris.fr
