Zakaria Chahbane

Speculative Garden is a curatorial and visual project that approaches the garden as a conceptual and imaginative terrain where boundaries between the natural and the constructed, the real and the fictional, begin to blur. Rather than presenting the garden as a fixed or idyllic space, the project treats it as a site of projection, speculation, and transformation shaped by cultural narratives, ecological concerns, and artistic intervention.

Bringing together works that engage with organic forms, artificial ecosystems, and symbolic landscapes, Speculative Garden unfolds as a layered environment where growth is both material and conceptual. The garden becomes a framework for thinking through processes of mutation, coexistence, and future imaginaries, inviting viewers to navigate shifting relationships between human and non-human agents, control and unpredictability, cultivation and wildness.

As graphic designer and artistic director, I developed a visual identity that reflects this oscillation between structure and organic proliferation. The design system draws on botanical references while abstracting them, favoring modular compositions, evolving typographic arrangements, and a visual rhythm that suggests continuous growth and transformation. Across printed and digital formats, the identity was conceived as something generative rather than fixed, adapting to different contexts while maintaining conceptual coherence.

The project extends into its communication strategy, where visual and textual elements work together to construct a speculative atmosphere rather than simply describe the exhibition. Through this approach, Speculative Garden positions itself not only as an exhibition, but as an evolving ecosystem of ideas, images, and narratives.

Ce Geste Vient D’Ailleurs is an exhibition conceived as an exploration of gesture as a site of transmission—one that exceeds authorship, geography, and fixed historical narratives. Bringing together a range of artistic practices, the project examines how forms, marks, and movements travel across time and context, carrying with them layered references, memories, and displacements. The exhibition unfolds as a constellation of gestures that resist singular interpretation, instead proposing a porous space where influences remain deliberately unresolved and in motion.

At its core, the project reflects on the idea of “elsewhere” not as a fixed location, but as a shifting condition embedded within artistic production itself. Works presented engage with this displacement—whether through material processes, symbolic vocabularies, or embodied practices—inviting viewers to consider how gestures are inherited, transformed, and reactivated across different cultural and temporal frameworks.

As graphic designer and artistic director, I developed the exhibition’s visual identity and oversaw its translation across spatial, printed, and digital formats. The design approach was rooted in extending the exhibition’s conceptual framework: emphasizing subtle tensions between presence and absence, trace and form, continuity and rupture. Through typography, composition, and material choices, the visual system sought to echo the notion of the gesture as something both precise and elusive.

In parallel, I managed the project’s communication strategy, ensuring coherence across all public-facing materials—from exhibition texts and signage to social media and editorial content. This role involved shaping not only the visual language but also the narrative voice of the exhibition, maintaining a consistent dialogue between concept, design, and audience engagement. The result is a project where curatorial intent, visual articulation, and communication operate as an integrated whole.

CoBrA, A Serpent With Multiple Heads is a research-driven editorial project that revisits the radical legacy of the CoBrA movement through a contemporary, multilingual lens. Bringing together a constellation of archival texts, critical essays, and translated writings, the publication unfolds as a fragmented yet interconnected narrative—echoing the collective, experimental, and transnational spirit that defined CoBrA itself. The “serpent” becomes both metaphor and structure: a body composed of multiple voices, temporalities, and ideological positions, resisting linear historiography in favor of a more fluid, living archive.

The project places particular emphasis on translation as an act of reactivation rather than simple transmission. By weaving together texts across languages and contexts, it opens new pathways into CoBrA’s theoretical and poetic dimensions, foregrounding its continued resonance within contemporary artistic practices and curatorial thinking.

As the graphic designer of the publication, I developed the book’s visual and typographic system, shaping how this multiplicity could be experienced spatially and materially. The layout responds directly to the project’s conceptual framework: it embraces fragmentation, rhythm, and variation while maintaining a coherent visual identity. Through deliberate typographic hierarchies, pacing, and interplay between text blocks, the design allows the reader to navigate a dense body of material without flattening its complexity.

Rather than imposing a rigid structure, the design operates as a flexible framework—one that accommodates shifts in tone, language, and authorship. Attention was given to the relationship between readability and disruption, clarity and experimentation, reflecting the tension inherent in CoBrA’s own practices. The result is a publication where form and content are deeply intertwined, and where design becomes an active participant in the construction of meaning.