For a few days this week, filmmaker Alice Diop has created a space for healing. For this year’s Miu Miu commission during Art Basel Paris, she has transformed the Place d’Iéna into a large-scale installation title Geste de Consolation (Gesture of Consolation).
The journey begins with Zanele Muholi’s Bona, Charlottesville, Virginia (2015), from the “Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness)” series. In the black-and-white photograph, we see the artist looking at themself in a mirror, but her face is only visible through their reflection. Beyond this is a new film by Diop, title [Sans titres] , which begins with excerpts from ethnographic films of African women, depicted as the other, and ending with shots that show empowered Black women.
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Further along is “Chambre à soi” (Living Room and Library), which Diop describes as a “living room for a thinking Black woman—a space of pause, learning and encounter.…