Guests were invited to discover the work of 17 international artists—among them Pierre Yovanovitch, Atang Tshikare, and Dimore Studio—who reinterpreted the Medallion Chair for the modern era.
The House of Dior’s Medallion Chair Exhibition has landed in the US at the new arts center during Design Miami and Art Basel Miami Beach at Superblue last night. Earlier this year the exhibition opened at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, where seventeen artists were invited to reinterpret the iconic medallion chair with their own chair. All Medallion chairs are on display from today until December 5th at Superblue.
“Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room,” like any of The Met’s period rooms, is a fabrication of a domestic space that assembles furnishings and objects to create a fiction of authenticity. Rather than affirm a fixed moment in time, however, this structure reimagines the immersive experience of the period room by embracing the African diasporic belief that the past, present, and future are interconnected.
On Friday the museum will open its first foray into interiors of the African diaspora with the installation Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room. Located significantly at the crossroads between the American wing and the 19th-century Britain and pre-19th-century Europe galleries, the period room considers a number of the varying influences on American and African American culture, creating a bridge between the past and the future.
ay a visit to the “period rooms” at most museums, and you’ll find assemblages of furniture, decor, and objects from a particular time period, all arranged to suggest you’ve stepped into a time capsule from a specific year in the past.
The title, Before Yesterday We Could Fly, is inspired by Virginia Hamilton’s legendary retellings of the Flying African tale, which celebrates enslaved peoples’ imagination, creative uses of flight, and the significance of spirituality and mysticism to Black communities in the midst of great uncertainty.
After years of being perceived by the rest of the Western world as a curiosity (alternatively a creative treasure trove to be plundered), African designers and Artists are finally being recognized for their talent. Recently Christian Dior came calling to South African Artist Atang Tshikare to apply his genius to their ‘Medallion Chair’. The Wire spoke to Atang about his latest collab.
Fascinated by his own Tswana heritage and the diversity of African cultures, Atang Tshikare’s work highlights beliefs and myths about the cosmos and divinity. For Dior, the artist has created a medallion chair in vegan tanned leather enhanced with constellations in relief, using a debossing effect.
The 17 designers who took part in the Dior Medallion exhibition created furniture pieces that span from true-to-form interpretations of the Medallion chair to wilder designs with intertwined legs and backrests that looked as if they had been blown back by a stiff wind. Among the designers showcasing their chairs was Atang Tshikare, who created Dinaledi, a chair decorated with beadwork that was handmade by a group of women from the Xhosa people in Cape Town, South Africa.
Milan – In occasion of the Salone del Mobile, Dior invited seventeen artists to reinterpret ‘the medallion chair’ – emblematic design object for Louis XVI and later on for Christian Dior. The fashion house selected the medallion chair to represent its style and welcome their guests during shows.