For this 12 months’s sixtieth Venice Biennale, curated by Brazilian-born Adriano Pedrosa, Chanel offered distinctive assist to French-Caribbean artist Julien Creuzet, who represents his nation on the French Pavilion. Along with the winners of the 2024 Chanel Subsequent Prize, he was fêted with an exquisitely spectacular dinner hosted by Yana Peel, world head of Chanel arts & tradition.
The fabulous soirée gathered the crème de la crème of the artwork world within the stuccoed Rococo salons of Palazzo Malipiero on the Grand Canal, a byzantine-Venetian gem just lately acquired by French artwork patron Nicolas Berggruen.
Welcoming visitors with a sublime and passionate speech, Peel highlighted the significance of artwork “as the best type of hope” and outlined freedom of creation as “the final word luxurious.” Praising Creuzet’s expertise ( “he’s a titan!”), she framed his intriguing, highly effective work inside this 12 months’s Biennale’s theme, Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners In every single place: “Artwork, tradition, and the drive to make can flip strangers into pals. My best hope is that our honorees tonight depart as pals and collaborators, as artwork additionally presents the best potential for shared meanings.”
Creuzet, carrying a towering hat concealing his intricate dreadlocks, was clearly the star of the night. Born in Paris and introduced up in Martinique, his oeuvre is as advanced as it’s spectacular, incorporating the biographical, the political and the non-public; it has additionally a performative edge, with montages of music, poetry and sculpture serving as canvas to his commentary on French colonial historical past and the retracing of African Ancestry.
The title of his wondrous set up for the French pavilion reads as a poem: “Attila cataract your supply on the toes of the inexperienced peaks will find yourself within the Nice Sea/Blue Abyss we drowned within the tidal tears of the moon.”
Praising the group of younger creators granted the ChanelL Subsequent Prize 2024, Peel mentioned that “they might’ve made Mademoiselle Chanel’s collaborator Sergei Diaghilev proud,” working throughout a number of inventive disciplines, from dance to visible artwork to classical music. Awarded by a jury comprising artist Cao Fei, artwork critic extraordinaire Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator and author Legacy Russell and actress Tilda Swinton, the winners are Georgian artist Tolia Astakhishvili, Russian movie director Kantemir Balagov, Irish dance choreographer Oona Doherty, New York sport developer Sam Eng, Singaporean animator and visible artist Ho Tzu Nyen, Native American artist and director Fox Maxy, American free jazz musician Moor Mom, Brazilian artist Dalton Paula, Icelandic symphonic composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir and American opera singer Davóne Tines. In her deliberation, Swinton acknowledged: “It is a time in our historical past when recent considering has by no means been extra urgent. Every of those artists factors us ahead and into the past.”
Like a Chanel fragrance, the night was an ideal mix of breezy French stylish and opulent Venitian luxe. The candle-lit arrange had a contact of the native: Rococo-shaped tables had been lined in black linen overlaid with white Italian lace; papier-mâché gilded candle holders had been handmade by native artisans; glassware was custom-made in Murano in collaboration with Laguna B; facet plates had been handpainted in gold leaf by Venitian artist Daniela Poletti. The record of attendees included gallerists Sadie Coles OBE and Jay Jopling, museum administrators Nicholas Cullinan OBE and Maria Balshaw OBE, actress Vicky Krieps, artwork patron Maja Hoffman, simply to call just a few; taking within the magical décor, they feasted on a scrumptious menu offered by Arrigo Cipriani’s Harry’s Bar, whose fluffy, decadent vanilla Meringue would make even probably the most ascetic of visitors fall into temptation. The cherry on prime? British Singer-songwriter Ayanna Witter-Johnson’s soulful musical efficiency.
