In ‘Tales & Tellers’, interdisciplinary artist Goshka Macuga reinterprets Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales film series for Art Basel Paris 2024’s public programme, putting the films into today’s context alongside Elvira Dyangani Osestaged.
Currently staged at Palais D’Iéna with Rem Koolhaas’ OMA, the first commission in the Women’s Tales series was The Powder Room by Zoe Cassavetes, shot in 2011, while the most recent, Laura Citarella’s El Affaire Miu Miu, was released last month. Miu Miu has commissioned 28 films in total, by directors including Agnès Varda, Miranda July, Naomi Kawase and Chloë Sevigny. The films all feature clothing by the brand, but they also show a wide swathe of female viewpoints from around the world, drawing on a variety of women’s experiences. They communicate messages from the direct to the esoteric, featuring the fashion but putting the filmmaking first.
‘First of all, it was very interesting to see the diversity of people who have produced these movies and so many different topics from all over the world,’ says Macuga. ‘It marks ten years of history. You can already see this progression of how society has changed, how we have changed in the way we relate to women's topics, and how the identities of women have evolved within this time as well. Then I questioned how to deal with such material and how to enhance all these different narratives that exist within it.’
The films take on the ideas of the loneliness of the modern age through the story of a young skateboarder, perceptions of the Middle East in Haifaa Al-Mansour’s The Wedding Singer and notions of femininity in I Am the Beauty of Your Beauty, I Am the Fear of Your Fear by Tan Chui Mui. In ‘Tales & Tellers’, the entire back catalogue is activated through live performance.
‘I very much wanted to look at the characters individually, and [also] as a group, and create this concept of a community. So, I extracted different characters from all these amazing films, and I created a situation where they all come together so they exist on their own, but there are moments when they come together and it becomes a dialogue and then, of course, the audience becomes part of it as witnesses and custodians of these tales. So, each character is, in a way, extending the idea of the tale back into real life.’
The performers, dressed in Miu Miu, move fluidly through the space sometimes individually and sometimes collectively, bringing elements of the films to life. Staged in keeping with the films’ storylines, each installation engages with the audience in a different way. You must pick up Varda’s film out of a box of fabric and play it on an iPad, you should sit at a dressing table and look into Cassavetes’, and July’s is on an iPhone that could have been left on a seat. Some require you to lean and others to submit as the characters move around you blending identities and narratives.
Tapping into the building’s history as a public forum, Ose has organised a talks programme with some of the directors and participants with a brief not to talk about their work, but to discuss their lives delving deeper into the realities women share. Also on view in the auditorium are all the films, screened in their entirety throughout the day.
Participating too is artist Sophia Al-Maria, who created a film for Miu Miu’s S/S 2024 catwalk show in Paris. In revisiting her work in this activation she discovered new things within it, expanding on the facilitating nature of working with the brand: ‘It was a really special experience because making films in the art world on this scale is impossible so I was able to work on film which I was really grateful for, cast who I wanted and play with subject matter which was important to me.’
‘Tales & Tellers’ will be on view from 16-18 October 2024, free of charge to the public and accompanied by a newspaper, The Truthless Times. Says Macuga: ‘Hopefully it will inspire other platforms to also create places for women to have a continuation in speaking and dealing with their issues. I guess in art things evolve and change and there's always the next thing we to move onto but without jeopardising what has come before.'
‘Miu Miu Tales & Tellers’ will be on view 16-18 October 2024 at Palais D’Iéna, miumiu.com
