Chanel Culture Fund for Julien Creuzet, who represents the French Pavilion, and Dalton Paula (winner of the Chanel Next Prize, now at the Arsenale among Pedrosa’s artists), supporting art in Venice.
Venice might have been Coco Chanel’s favourite city, for its beauty, certainly, though also for the charm and inspiration it commands: Byzantine and Oriental riches, Gothic flowering style, Renaissance-era consistency… Chanel was a lioness, too, proud and revolutionary like Venice has always been. The Chanel Culture Fund’s mission is to offer visibility to modern artists. On occasion of the 60th Venice Art Biennale, the Fund will support Julien Creuzet, representing France. The Martinican-born artist created an intense piece of immersive art by mixing together music, videos of troubled seas, wax installations, coloured threads, and salvaged objects that the Ocean deposited on the beach. Further artists sponsored by the Chanel Culture Fund are at the Arsenale, like Brazilian Dalton Paula, who also won the Chanel Next Prize. Paula paints portraits of black Brazilians who had been forgotten or were otherwise unknown, giving a face to those history didn’t recognize properly in a country that had a history of slavery and colonization. Dalton Paula focuses on terreiros – places of worship – and quilombos – communities of formerly enslaved people.
