Tisser les imaginaires

This summer, Collection Thalie in Arles presents “Tisser les imaginaires” (“Weaving Imaginaries”), an exhibition dedicated to textile practices, that runs from July 7 to July 31, 2026. Housed in an 18th-century private mansion near the city’s Roman arena, the show brings together works from the Thalie collection alongside a residency project by designer Leo Orta and pieces from ALEOR, a design studio focused on bio-materials. The exhibition is curated by Nathalie Guiot, founder and president of Fondation Thalie, and Alexia Venot, the gallery’s creative director.

The artists in the collection give shape to imaginative narratives around textile and craft. Leo Orta’s residency work confronts those narratives with material reality — gathering, observing, and experimenting with local resources in the Camargue region, particularly basket-weaving traditions at risk of disappearing.

Textiles and fiber are applied in a variety of different ways. From work that is specific to the environment and living systems, such as Diana Scherer and Elise Peroi to artists using the material in a more sculptural and structural ways, such as the pleated fabric sculptures by Simone Pheulpin. Eva Jospin’s embroidered landscape framed in sculpted cardboard all sit somewhere between craft, fiction, and symbolic projection. Embroidery, straw marquetry, and weaving run through the exhibition in dialogue with one another, connecting different eras and stories. Sheila Hicks has had a lifelong interest in structure, form, and color, using different forms of fiber and textiles to communicate this in numerous ways. For Majd Abdel Hamid, embroidery functions as a form of resistance, its slowness a quiet but firm response to a turbulent world.

The full list of artists includes: Asemahle Ntlonti, Ilanit Illouz, Françoise Vanneraud, Simone Pheulpin, Amina Agueznay, Rosana Escobar, Max Funkat, Elise Peroi, Diana Scherer, Majd Abdel Hamid, Caroline Achaintre, Cathryn Boch, Ange Dakouo, Edith Dekyndt, Sidival Fila, Pauline Guerrier, Eva Jospin, Junko Oki, Leo Orta, Lucy + Jorge Orta, Kustaa Saksi, Sheila Hicks, and Georges Tony Stoll.

“Tisser les imaginaires” underscores how textiles remain an important mode of communication, from expressing environmental concerns to political issues, to pushing the boundaries of contemporary art, craft and design. As Nathalie Guiot writes, “Faced with resource depletion and climate change, art has the capacity to cultivate new imaginaries, while design offers solutions to transform our ways of life.”

“Tisser les imaginaires” is on view through July 31, 2026.

Fondation Thalie

@fondationthalie