Hassan Hajjaj: La Salle de Gym des Femmes Arabes / The Arab Women’s Gym
Hassan Hajjaj’s La Salle de Gym des Femmes Arabes transforms Aga Khan Park into a vivid open-air encounter with colour, fashion, and female athleticism. The free exhibition presents a series of photographic portraits in which sport and style merge, placing Arab women at the centre of images that are at once playful, theatrical, and sharply self-aware. Curated by Marianne Fenton, the installation uses the park’s public setting to extend that sense of visibility, allowing the work to meet viewers outside the conventions of the gallery space.
View of Hassan Hajjaj: La Salle de Gym des Femmes Arabes, Armstrong, 2015/1437 at the Aga Khan Park. Photo: Nusrat Papia
What stands out first in these photographs is their visual intensity. Hajjaj dresses his subjects in boldly coloured tracksuits, floral coats, designer-branded niqabs, and statement shoes, surrounding them with equally vibrant borders made from everyday canned goods arranged like North African–inspired mosaics.
Header 2006/1427 framed photography by ©Hassan Hajjaj, 2006/1427. Part of La Salle de Gym des Femmes Arabes series. Courtesy of Hassan Hajjaj Studio
Across the series, athletic accessories such as boxing gloves, footballs, surfboards, and gym shoes appear not simply as props but as part of a highly stylized image world in which fashion, sport, and performance are inseparable. The mix of logos, textiles, and saturated colour gives the photographs a pop sensibility, while the use of branded motifs such as Nike and Louis Vuitton turns consumer culture into a visual language that is both familiar and subtly disruptive.
Red Nike 2011/1432 framed photography by ©Hassan Hajjaj, 2006/1427. Part of La Salle de Gym des Femmes Arabes series. Courtesy of Hassan Hajjaj Studio
The women in these images do not appear as passive sitters; they pose, spar, balance, and confront the camera with striking composure. Some wear hijabs or niqabs paired with boxing gloves or athletic wear, creating images that refuse the usual oppositions between modesty and movement, tradition and modernity, fashion and strength. By showing women boxing, playing soccer, and surfing, the series reimagine the gym as a space of confidence, performance, and agency rather than restriction, and in doing so challenges reductive assumptions about Arab and Muslim women.
Head to Head, framed photography by ©Hassan Hajjaj, 2006/1427. Part of La Salle de Gym des Femmes Arabes series. Courtesy of Hassan Hajjaj Studio
The outdoor installation adds an important layer to that meaning. Wallpaper describes the works in Aga Khan Park as a run of low billboards, where women in boldly coloured sportswear and floral outerwear appear in sparring poses under the open sky. Seen in a public park rather than inside a closed museum, these photographs gain a different kind of force: they occupy shared space, making images of Arab women in motion visible to casual passersby as well as intentional visitors. That shift matters, because a series concerned with representation and stereotype becomes even more resonant when placed in an environment defined by openness, access, and everyday public movement.
Southpaw, framed photography by ©Hassan Hajjaj, 2012/1433 (left) and Orthodox, framed photography by ©Hassan Hajjaj, 2011/1432 (right), both Part of La Salle de Gym des Femmes Arabes series. Courtesy of Hassan Hajjaj Studio
Seen outdoors, Hajjaj’s photographs feel especially lively and immediate. As the works unfold along Aga Khan Park, La Salle de Gym des Femmes Arab becomes both a striking portrait series and a meditation on visibility in public space.
Nusrat Papia
*Exhibition information: Hassan Hajjaj, La Salle de Gym des Femmes Arabes, September 13, 2025 –September 7, 2026, Aga Khan Park, 77 Wynford Drive, Toronto.