Summary:
- Alice Diop presents Geste de Consolation, her first exhibition, at the Palais d’Iéna in Paris from October 21 to 25, 2026.
- Miu Miu backs the show as official partner of the Art Basel Paris Public Program, and entry is free.
- The route has four spaces and ends in front of Simone Leigh’s bronze sculpture “Sentinel (Mami Wata)”.
Alice Diop presents her first exhibition, Geste de Consolation, at the Palais d’Iéna in Paris from October 21 to 25, 2026. Entry is free. A preview day took place on October 20, and online registration for guided tours opened on October 8 on the Miu Miu website.
Miuccia Prada invited the French filmmaker to develop the project. Miu Miu backs the show as official partner of the Public Program of Art Basel Paris, while the fair runs at the Grand Palais from October 23 to 25. The Palais d’Iéna houses the Economic, Social and Environmental Council and hosts the brand’s runway shows. Geste de Consolation is the third Miu Miu project there since the company and Art Basel Paris announced their partnership in 2024.
Diop continues the work she began with Fragments for Venus, the 2025 short film she made for Miu Miu Women’s Tales. Both projects examine how Black women are represented and why those representations still matter today. Alice Diop explains the approach: “I would like my curation to focus on acts of consolation conceived by Black women artists. Each in her own field, to remedy the fetishistic gaze to which centuries of art history have confined us.”
The route runs through four connected spaces. You start with a photograph by South African artist Zanele Muholi and a two-screen video installation of archive images and film sequences. Chambre à soi follows, a library set up as a living room, with rugs carrying a pattern by Mary Lee Bendolph, a Gee’s Bend quilter, and a selection of books. At the center, an amphitheater hosts readings of texts by Zora Neale Hurston, Audre Lorde, June Jordan and Zadie Smith, a choreographic adaptation by Ivorian choreographer Nadia Beugré, and performances by composer Angel Bat Dawid with her ensemble Sistazz of the Nitty-Gritty. You finish in front of “Sentinel (Mami Wata)”, a bronze sculpture by Simone Leigh, almost five meters tall. The work refers to Mami Wata, a West African water spirit.
Andrea Darren
Born in Manchester, from a young age, she was passionate about art and design. She studied at the University of the Arts in London, where she developed her skills in these fields. Today, Andrea works as an editor for a renowned publishing house, combining her love for art and design with her editorial expertise.
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