The Gallery
Les Sens is a modern and contemporary art gallery founded by Mojdeh Rahimzadeh in Dubai in 2023. Rooted in a dialogue between visual art, literature, and philosophy, the gallery explores the ways artworks engage with perception, memory, time, and human experience. Working with established and emerging artists, Les Sens presents a carefully considered programme that brings together different generations, artistic traditions, and visual languages. Rather than being defined by a particular medium or movement, the gallery is interested in works that invite sustained attention and reveal new meanings over time. At Les Sens, art is approached not only as something to be seen, but also as an encounter that can challenge perception, awaken associations, and transform the way we understand our relationship with the world.
The Founder
Mojdeh Rahimzadeh, founder of Les Sens, holds a PhD in French Literature and has developed a long-standing intellectual and personal engagement with art alongside her academic work on Marcel Proust. Her scholarly research, publications, and translations on Proust have explored questions of perception, memory, sensation, and meaning ideas that have also shaped her understanding and appreciation of visual art. A scholar of French literature with a deep knowledge of and engagement with art, she has developed her relationship with modern and contemporary art through sustained study, close observation, and the development of a personal art collection. Her approach is grounded in an interest in what happens beyond the first act of looking: how colour, material, light, form, and texture can evoke sensations, memories, and associations, and how meaning can emerge through the encounter between an artwork and the person experiencing it. Her engagement with Proust has further shaped her understanding of art as a field of correspondences, where different forms of expression and experience can illuminate one another. This perspective informs the way she approaches artworks and the relationships between them.
The Story
Les Sens began with a personal collection. Over the years, individual encounters with artworks gradually developed into a broader reflection on the relationships between art, memory, and personal experience. The collection was never conceived around a single style or artistic movement. Instead, works were brought together through affinities that emerged over time, sometimes through their visual qualities, sometimes through less immediate connections. As the collection evolved, so did the desire to extend this personal experience into a space for exchange, discovery, and dialogue. In 2023, this journey took shape as Les Sens in Dubai. Today, the gallery brings this perspective into a wider artistic context, creating connections between artists, artworks, and audiences across different cultural backgrounds.
The Name
The name Les Sens draws inspiration from Marcel Proust and the multiple meanings of the French word sens: senses, meaning, and direction. These meanings lie at the heart of the gallery’s identity. In Proust’s writing, a sensory impression can unexpectedly bring the past into the present, revealing something that conscious memory alone cannot recover. This relationship between sensation, memory, and time offers a way of thinking about visual art beyond its immediate appearance. An artwork may first reach us through an impression whose significance is not yet clear. Its meaning can unfold gradually, shaped by memory, experience, and the passage of time. For Les Sens, the name expresses this movement from sensation towards meaning, and the possibility that each encounter with art may reveal something previously unnoticed.
Our Perspective
Les Sens brings together an interest in Iranian modernism and contemporary artistic practices, with an openness to different generations, cultures, and visual languages. Our perspective has been shaped in part by a personal collection that spans diverse artistic approaches, from abstraction and modern calligraphy to figurative painting, sculpture, and contemporary expressions. Rather than seeking stylistic uniformity, we are interested in the relationships that can emerge between distinct works and artistic practices. These connections may arise through shared concerns, unexpected contrasts, or different ways of approaching perception, memory, identity, and time. We value the individuality of each artwork while considering how its meaning may evolve through encounters with other works, different viewers, and changing contexts. For Les Sens, curating is an act of establishing meaningful relationships without diminishing the singularity of each artistic expression.