Miu Miu Unveils a Striking New Exhibition at Art Basel Paris—And Celebrates With an Intimate Dinner at Maxim’s

On Tuesday evening, if you happened to walk into the cavernous central hall of the Palais d’Iéna—the Rationalist architectural marvel that has served as Miu Miu’s go-to Paris show venue over the past few years—the first thing you might have noticed was a handful of familiar faces. To celebrate their partnership with this week’s Art Basel Paris fair—and their new exhibition, Tales Tellers, conceived by artist Goshka Macuga and convened by curator Elvira Dyangani Ose—Miu Miu had brought together an eclectic (and very stylish) gang of artists and actors to toast the opening: from Chloë Sevigny in a leather motorcycle jacket with crystals sprinkled across the shoulders, to Priscilla star Cailee Spaeny clinking Champagne glasses with a friend, to Juliette Binoche inspecting the artworks from behind sunglasses while wearing a cropped faux fur jacket and pearls.

But the second thing you were likely to notice? The handful of attendees weaving their way through the assembled throng with an unusual sense of purpose, all decked out in archival Miu Miu looks from across the years. (For true Prada-heads, it offered a fun game of spot the collection.) And if those faces also looked a little familiar, that was very much intentional: each of these mysterious figures was an actor selected by Macuga and Dyangani Ose to reinterpret a character from one of the dozens of films and artistic inventions commissioned by Miu Miu over the past 15 years, whether for its pioneering Women’s Tales film series or as part of their runway shows. “It should feel like a surreal, energetic gathering,” said Macuga. “Alive and full of motion.”

Photo: Courtesy of Miu Miu

That it certainly did: lining the hall were screens displaying all 28 of the Women’s Tales films, variously displayed across shimmering circular LEDs, TV monitors affixed to cages and placed on sunloungers, and even a screen embedded into a skateboard. In what felt more like a work of immersive theater than your average art opening—Macuga herself aspired to create an atmosphere like that of a “lively town square”—crowds flocked around the performers as they recreated stand-up routines or sang mournful cabaret songs at a microphone. For many of the filmmakers and artists whose films were being revived, nearly all of whom were there in person to witness it, the experience was an emotional one. Zola director Janicza Bravo—whose Kelsey Lu and Natasha Lyonne-starring 2022 Women’s Tales film House Comes With a Bird remains one of the series’ standouts—likened the community of women filmmakers coming together as something akin to a family reunion. Another filmmaker described the event, with a wink, as the Miu Miu Eras Tour.