Alice Diop takes over the Palais d’Iéna for Art Basel Paris, turning the hall where Miu Miu stages its runway presentations into an arena of live performance. The Miu Miu Art Basel Paris commission Geste de Consolation is a four-part exhibition at the Palais d’Iéna conceived by Diop featuring video installations, live literature readings, sound, and monumental bronze sculpture. Invited by Miuccia Prada, Diop advances the dialogue begun with “Fragments for Venus,” her 2025 film for Miu Miu Women’s Tales, shifting from screen direction into physical curation. The project marks, per Miu Miu, a “fascination with the lives of women: their experiences, their histories and their hidden stories.”
“I want my curation to center on acts of consolation conceived by Black women artists, each active in their own discipline, to repair the fetishizing gaze to which centuries of art history have confined us,” says Alice Diop. She unites peers who “have healed me, who have nourished me.”
Patchwork carpets bearing motifs by artist Mary Lee Bendolph spread across the floor of Chambre à soi, converting the concrete interior into a public reading room. Books line the space, providing what serves, per the brand, as “a portrait of a Black woman thinking in the 21st century.” Live readings replace the quiet room at the center stage. Performers including Penda Diouf, Alice Da Luz Gomes, Latifa Laabissi, Séphora Pondi, Davide-Christelle Sanvee, and Betty Tchomanga recite texts by Audre Lorde, Zora Neale Hurston, June Jordan, Marie Ndiaye, and Zadie Smith. Six dancers stage an adapted version of Ivorian choreographer Nadia Beugré’s Prophétique, joined by Chicago musician Angel Bat Dawid and her ensemble, Sistazz of the Nitty-Gritty.
Simone Leigh’s bronze Sentinel (Mami Wata) anchors the final chamber, rising nearly five meters tall. A sculpted serpent coils around the elongated female figure, referencing the West African water spirit as a guardian over the hall. Tiered benches surround the perimeter, setting spectators in direct view of one another and the stage. The exhibition opens to the public at the Palais d’Iéna from October 21 until October 25, following an October 20 preview. Guided tour reservations open October 8 on miumiu.com.
