Category Arts

There’s a pleasing ease and sensuousness to “Trinket,” Kapwani Kiwanga’s exhibition at the Canadian Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. That comes from not only its primary materials—millions of tiny glass beads, made on the nearby island of Murano (where glass has been produced for at least six centuries) and then strung into sweeping curtains lining the structure—but also its soothing arrangement of colors that shift from gradient to imperceptible depending on your vantage point: pale yellow, sunset orange, white, maroon, and the rare, prized cobalt draped across the building’s exterior, quivering with the breeze off the Venetian Lagoon.

This immersive environment, covering the pavilion’s interior and exterior, brings an expansiveness (and sheer beauty) to surely one of the smallest pavilions in the Giardini—and installations with such alluring aesthetic qualities are frankly rare on these grounds of late. “So much of contemporary art is ugly,” a fellow critic remarks as we appreciatively survey the installation. Before I can consider that pith, I overhear a guard sharply admonish a visitor for accidentally brushing a bead curtain: “The beads are all made by hand and strung by hand—all by hand!”

Underscoring this preciousness is the fact that Canadian-born, Paris-based Kiwanga—the first Black woman artist selected for the country’s pavilion—considers the various materials she works with as documents or witnesses, bearers of histories, economies, and culture. Research is at the heart of her practice; she estimates her process is 70% research and 30% production.

In “Trinket,” the miniature seed beads, or conterie, pack a rich history dating back to the 15th century, when they spread from Murano via commerce routes linking Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Besides acting as currency in some communities (conterie is derived from the word for counting), the glass beads became part of material cultures in these far-flung places, appearing in jewelry and clothes and acquiring important ritual, aesthetic, and symbolic value. The exhibition explores this network of trade, power structures, influences, and cultural exchange and examines disparities in how seed beads were perceived and the value assigned to them (European traders, for example, considered them mere trinkets), while also reflecting on the enduring legacy of the transoceanic trade.

There are actors who seem tailor-made to play certain roles, and then there is Kristin Chenoweth in The Queen of Versailles: Not since she belted “Popular” in a bundle of pink tulle has Chenoweth sunk her teeth into a part so uniquely suited to her talents. And it makes sense, given that The Queen of Versailles reunites the performer with her Wicked composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz, who developed the role of Glinda the Good Witch with Chenoweth in mind back in the early aughts.

“Stephen has been teasing me and saying he wants to write me an original musical for years!” Chenoweth tells Vogue. “Every time he said, ‘I promise I’m gonna do it before I die!’ I’d just go, ‘Yeah, yeah, sure, buddy.’”

It may have taken more than two decades, but Schwartz finally delivered on his promise. Currently running at Boston’s Colonial Theatre, The Queen of Versailles stars Chenoweth as Jacquelie “Jackie” Siegel, the real-life pageant queen turned socialite who collects Birkin bags like Funko Pops. F. Murray Abraham plays her significantly older husband, David Siegel, the founder of a timeshare company with a net worth north of $6 billion.

The Whitney Museum of American Art’s “Edges of Ailey” exhibition is a feast for the senses. Occupying the museum’s entire fifth floor, the show brings together hundreds of objects—paintings, drawings, photographs, videos, archival material, journal entries, and more—in tribute to Alvin Ailey, the late titan of modern dance whose influence on Black American culture is still deeply felt today.

Curated by Adrienne Edwards, “Edges of Ailey” was six years in the making. Though he is best known as the founder, in 1958, of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey engaged with many art forms beyond dance, and this show is similarly wide-ranging. Edwards combed through Ailey’s archives and sought artwork of all kinds that spoke to his legacy; the overall effect is a coming together of excellent Black and queer visual art that channels struggle, triumph, and transcendence—key themes of Ailey’s riveting choreography.

More than 80 artists are represented in the show, with works spanning from 1851 to this year. Presiding over all of it is an 18-channel video (and accompanying audio) playing performance clips and archival interviews. It’s a lot to take in, but it is this abundance that makes “Edges of Ailey” so very moving. A spirit of generosity coursed through Ailey’s career. What better way to honor him than by uniting so many incredible works under one roof.

Below, 10 standout pieces from “Edges of Ailey” to look out for as you make your way through this expansive show.

When, last year, the shiny new Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC) in Lower Manhattan announced the shows that would inaugurate its state-of-the-art theaters, a revival of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Cats set in the Harlem ballroom community raised more than a few eyebrows. The 1982 musical has its devoted fans; the original production ran for 21 years on the West End and 18 years on Broadway. But a catastrophic film adaptation in 2019—and the theater-kid uncoolness that has always pulsated beneath the plotless piece—made it tough to imagine it working.

So, more than a month into its mega-successful run—beloved by critics and audiences alike (today, the production announced its third extension)—how did Cats: The Jellicle Ball pull it off? For one thing, through an honest and open engagement with figures from the ballroom world, some of whom were cast in the show or brought onto the creative team. The creativity is most dazzling in the choreography by Omari Wiles, a ballroom figure who has worked with Beyoncé, Madonna, and Janet Jackson, and Arturo Lyons, another scene icon best known outside the balls for participating in (and, one season, winning) Legendary, HBO’s voguing competition. In this production of Cats, we’re not learning about a mystical group of feline cats hoping to ascend to another life, but getting a glimpse into a community of glamorous humans—predominantly queer and of color—competing for trophies in runway cat-egories.

“I have rarely seen an audience respond with as much joy and love,” Lloyd Weber said of the show in a recent statement. “The atmosphere was, quite simply, electric. Cats and ballroom culture both emerged in the same era and I am delighted that, all these years later, they are intersecting once again.”

To find out how Wiles and Lyons brought ballroom magic into a classic piece of musical theater, Vogue spoke with the pair, as well as two of the production’s breakout stars—Chasity “Tempress” Moore, who lends Grizabella the Glamour Cat an unforgettably poignant air, and Robert “Silk” Mason, who turns in a gag-a-minute take on the magical Mr. Mistoffelees—both of whom also hail from ballroom. These conversations have been edited and condensed.

Reminiscing about her early childhood in a small, agricultural town in southern Russia, Anastasia Samoylova can’t help but recall the many striking visuals that shaped the first years of her life: bold propaganda posters, brightly colored ads, and the iconic red-and-gold palette of the Russian Orthodox church.

“I’ve always processed the world through a hyper-visual lens,” Samoylova says. “My brain was always seeking patterns among colors and trying to understand what visuals meant, even well before I could read.”

In adulthood, the rising contemporary artist has built a thriving career in observational photography, drawing on her skill at identifying mesmerizing color schemes in scenes that most would overlook. Like legendary documentary photographers such as Walker Evans and Berenice Abbott, many of Samoylova’s most lauded photographs are the product of road trips—namely, those she’s taken all across Florida, where she’s lived since 2016.

In her captivating and often complex compositions, Samoylova engages with pressing issues such as environmentalism, gentrification, and political fanaticism. In Gatorama (2020), for instance, the artist beautifully captures an alligator bathing in a rusty, abandoned pool against a bubble-gum pink backdrop. Lost Wig (2017) centers the Medusa-like figure of a stranded hairpiece layered over a person’s shadow. And Gun Shop, Port Orange (2019) the viewer’s attention to a mint green Floridian building, its cheerful façade emblazoned with the dark silhouettes of firearms.

When Wayne McGregor first asked Alessandra Ferri to come out of retirement and anchor his ambitious ballet Woolf Works in 2015, it was an easy yes—and not only because the endearingly polite British choreographer asked her nicely, over tea.

Now, nine years later, the Italian dancer—one of the very few awarded the title of prima ballerina assoluta—has agreed to dance the role McGregor created for her once more. This month, at 61, Ferri will perform in two shows as the award-winning work, inspired by the life and writing of Virginia Woolf, has its New York premiere with American Ballet Theater. (ABT principal dancers Gillian Murphy and Hee Seo will alternate the role on other nights.)

Though Ferri seldom performs these days, she didn’t need much persuading to work with McGregor again—nor to dance on stage in the city that she called home for 30 years. In fact, she was enamored with the idea. After beginning her career at London’s Royal Ballet, she was invited to join ABT as a principal in 1985 by Mikhail Baryshnikov himself. As an international guest artist, she also lent her talents to La Scala Theatre Ballet in Milan—where one of her performances in Romeo & Juliet, showcasing her prowess not only as a dancer, but as an actress too, would have a profound impact on McGregor.

“It has really been my favorite role of this ‘second chapter,’ if we’ll call it that,” Ferri tells Vogue of her Woolf Works part during a break in her rehearsal schedule. Since announcing her retirement in 2007, she has emerged on several occasions to delight a grateful public. “I’ve been lucky to have many wonderful roles created for me, but this one has stayed very deeply inside of me,” she notes. “It has so many facets, depicting an amazing woman and artist who is incredibly strong and revolutionary, but who is so fragile and vulnerable at the same time.”

Ferri dived into her own well of life experience to unearth personal parallels, keenly aware that continuing to dance at her age, and defying preconceived notions about what the female body is capable of, was an important act in itself.

“Ballet is thought of as a young person’s game—ballerinas often retire in their 30s or 40s,” adds McGregor. “But why is it like that? Why have we allowed that limitation on people’s physical expression? I’m a massive advocate of working with people at all ages because they bring a completely different creative intelligence to the work.”

In 1978 a vicious studio fire led the artist Tina Girouard to move from New York City, where she had been ensconced in the downtown art scene for a decade, back to Louisiana, the state where she was born in 1946. As devastating as the fire was, her pivot home was not a defeat. Girouard, who died in 2020 at the age of 73, was constantly in a state of return—both physically and in broader, more philosophical ways. Crossing time and geographies was a key preoccupation of her multidisciplinary practice.

“This relationship to place, which is not one of permanence but of coming back and leaving, is so ingrained in Tina’s story,” says Andrea Andersson, the founding director and chief curator at the Rivers Institute, a New Orleans–based arts nonprofit. Rivers worked closely with Girouard’s estate and the Center for Art, Research, and Alliances (CARA) to organize the retrospective “Tina Girouard: Sign-In,” now on view at CARA’s space in New York City after a run at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans.

Ah, to be in Paris in the summertime, when it’s almost as pleasant to lounge in a park as it is to venture into the capital’s museums. In fact, the two are often best enjoyed when they’re linked: napping on the grass after discovering a cutting-edge artist in a new gallery is, in our opinion, one of the best ways you can spend a Sunday afternoon.

Whether you’re in France for Vogue World, vacances, or some combination of the two, there are all manner of compelling exhibitions to see this month. From work by self-taught American artist Kelly Beeman to a new Miquel Barceló survey, Vogue has selected the must-see gallery and museum shows in Paris (and beyond) this June.

Franco-American photographer and sculptor Sabine Mirlesse has long made geology the focus of her work. Her installations, both monumental and ephemeral, invite viewers to see the poetry in visions we might consider trivial—take Crystalline Thresholds | Les Portes de Givre, a series of seven frosted structures erected on the summit of the Puy de Dôme at an altitude of 1,465 meters. With “Voyant,” her new exhibition at Galerie Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Sabine Mirlesse continues to pursue her obsessions, unveiling a new series of never-before-exhibited works.

“Sabine Mirlesse: Voyant” is at Andréhn-Schiptjenko (Paris) through July 20, 2024.