Beyond the Visible
Duet Exhibition Featuring
Samineh Amel Sayyah
Marion Pons Koch
Beyond the Visible
Curatorial Statement
Beyond the Visible brings together the photographic practices of Marion Pons Koch and Samineh Amel Sayyah in an exhibition that explores photography as a language for the unseen. Moving beyond the documentary function of the camera, both artists transform the photographic image into a space where memory, identity, vulnerability, and emotional experience take visual form. Their works invite viewers to look beyond appearances and enter a realm where photographs become vessels for reflection, healing, and transformation.
For Marion Pons Koch, photography is an evolving practice that dissolves the boundaries between image, painting, and mixed media. Rooted in explorations of mental health, memory, and the body, her work seeks to embody experiences that often resist language. Rather than documenting reality, she constructs visual narratives that transform intimate stories into shared spaces of empathy and resilience. Through this process, vulnerability becomes a source of empowerment, revealing the profound ways our personal histories continue to inhabit both our bodies and the world around us.
For Samineh Amel Sayyah, this exhibition highlights a distinctive aspect of her multidisciplinary practice—her photographic work. While her artistic practice spans painting, installation, digital art, and fashion, her photography reveals a deeply poetic approach to visual storytelling. Through carefully composed images, expressive use of light, and a painterly sensitivity, she creates photographs that move between reality and imagination. Portraits, gestures, fabrics, and shadows become symbols of transformation, memory, and the evolving nature of identity, inviting viewers into psychological landscapes where emotion is felt as much as it is seen.
Although their artistic journeys are distinct, both artists share a commitment to expressing what cannot be fully articulated through words. Their photographs do not seek definitive answers or fixed narratives; instead, they embrace ambiguity, allowing personal experiences to resonate on a universal level. Memory becomes fluid, identity remains in constant transformation, and the camera becomes a tool not simply for observation, but for revelation.
Beyond the Visible invites us to reconsider what a photograph can be. Here, the image is no longer a record of a single moment, but a living space where memory, emotion, and imagination converge. Together, Marion Pons Koch and Samineh Amel Sayyah demonstrate that photography has the power to reveal not only what stands before the lens, but also the invisible worlds we carry within ourselves.
ABOUT Samineh Amel Sayyah
Samineh Amel Sayyah (b. 1983, Tehran) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, drawing, installation, fashion design, photography, and digital art. Rooted in a lifelong devotion to creativity, her work is a powerful testament to transformation—of self, form, and perception. Educated in graphic design at the conservatory and painting at university, Sayyah's early artistic journey was shaped by technical rigor and a restless desire to explore beyond conventional boundaries. Emerging from a period of personal upheaval with renewed artistic purpose, Sayyah redefined her practice by embracing multiplicity—blending traditional techniques with contemporary media, and personal narrative with universal symbolism. Her portraits are not merely likenesses, but shifting reflections of inner states and collective memory. Faces dissolve into one another, space fractures and reforms, and the canvas becomes a living field of emotion, rhythm, and thought. Throughout her evolution as an artist, Sayyah has remained committed to amplifying women's voices and challenging static notions of identity. Her installations create immersive worlds, where materials and memories are interwoven into intimate, often tactile, experiences. Whether working on canvas or in space, her art is a form of visual storytelling that resists fixed interpretations, inviting viewers into a dialogue with the unseen and the unknown. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Iran, Turkey, Greece, Italy, the UAE, and the United States. As she continues to develop a singular visual language that fuses her diverse experiences, Sayyah is not just producing art—she is building bridges between the internal and external, the fragmented and whole, the seen and the imagined.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Beyond the Visible begins with a simple question: What lies beyond the visible that I want to reveal? As I reflect on this question, I realize that my life is surrounded by countless unseen layers. Even what I see with my own eyes belongs to what lies beyond the visible—let alone what cannot be seen at all. The things most hidden from my sight are often the very things that exist before my eyes every day. What we encounter daily becomes so familiar and repetitive that we gradually stop truly seeing it. Sometimes, what appears to be the most visible becomes the most invisible part of our experience. With this realization, I decide to revisit the familiar paths of my everyday life through a renewed perspective. Carrying a small chair with me, I return to these places, pause, observe, and allow this body of work to emerge. These works are an attempt to rediscover what has always been present, yet has remained unnoticed. Some of these works are deeply influenced by the atmosphere of churches. A journey to Armenia leaves a profound impression on me. Within its churches, I encounter the faith of the people, the silence, the sense of presence, and a deeply spiritual atmosphere. These experiences do not immediately become artworks; instead, they remain within me and gradually reveal themselves through these images in an intuitive and unconscious way. Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Tyahun for his invaluable collaboration on this project.
Featured Works of Samineh Amel Sayyah
ABOUT Marion Pons Koch
Marion Pons Koch (b. 1987) lives and works in Paris. Holding degrees in creative direction and communication, she develops a practice as a visual artist and photographer-author.
Her work explores the resonances between mental health, memory, and the body
through the hybridization of photography, painting, and mixed media. Guided by intention, she seeks to embody the invisible and the unspeakable. Her practice turns vulnerability into a space for emancipation and political affirmation — a commitment to the way our personal stories inhabit the world.
Represented by the agency Art Confidential and a member of the Monolith collective, her work has been featured in international publications and exhibitions (Too Tired Project in the United States, BBA Gallery in Berlin, Art Seen Magazine, 101 Artbook, Sfumato Art Creatives) and was presented at the Festival OFF d'Arles in 2026.
ARTIST STATEMENT
My artistic practice draws its inspiration from the personal. It centers primarily on photography and painting to explore the connections between mental health, memory, and the body. I seek to give form to the inexpressible and invisible by combining these mediums, that tends to transform intimate narratives into symbolic and curative works. Through this process, I aim to turn vulnerability into a space of collective resonance, emancipation, and political affirmation — as an engagement with the way our stories inhabit the world.
Writing can accompanies this process, whether as a personal journal or inscribed directly within the work. My practice is an act of repair, reconstruction, and empowerment through the artistic gesture. As a visual artist, I do not think in terms of materials but in terms of intention: I choose the tools—photography, painting, archives, and beyond—that best embody my narrative. Rather than keeping mediums strictly separate, I seek to identify what best suits each project, allowing
myself the freedom to experiment as techniques layer, fade, or physically transform through the addition or removal of material.
In my series Gueules pimpées, the use of mixed media becomes an act of care, restoring dignity to faces broken by history. In Un Monstre sans corps, where I explore the depths of depression, the act of creating and showing images is itself a process of reconstruction. My photographs also dialogue with vernacular imagery— archives stripped of their original meaning to enrich the narrative through association and provide a sense of collective resonance.
My paintings, such as the Monstresses cycle, serve as a counterpoint to fragility while integrating it. Rooted in a feminist approach, these works transform interior states into totemic figures. By subverting folkloric references and female archetypes, I use the figure of the monster-woman as a space for emancipation and a political reclamation of the body, challenging misogynistic projections.
