Living Creatively

Chanel's iconic quilted handbag, known in fashion circles as the “2.55” after its release date of February 1955, is the focus of a landmark international travelling art exhibition.

 

Called Mobile Art, the exhibition shows the works of 20 artists in a unique futuristic pavilion designed by the architect Zaha Hadid. Just as fashion spreads throughout the world, so too will this exhibition – for two years – in Asia, the United States and Europe. Having been to Hong Kong and Tokyo, it is currently on its way to New York, where it will open in October, followed by London, Moscow and, finally, Paris.

 

"It is a sort of passing UFO that lands for a number of weeks in the middle of some of the world's largest cities," says Fabrice Bousteau, the curator of the exhibition.

 

Twenty contemporary artists from all corners of the globe have been invited by Chanel to exhibit work inspired by the elements that give the emblematic Chanel bag its identity. Their unique and unexpected interpretations – said to be poetic, cheeky and inspirational – reveal the multiple facets of the bag in all the artistic mediums.

 

Zaha Hadid's contemporary art container is the world's first travelling museum. One of the world's most recognised architects, Hadid was commissioned by Chanel's creative director Karl Lagerfeld to create an exceptional art space to travel the world. The curved, white, organic shell combines sculptural sensuality with a coherent formal logic. It is a fluid, creative landscape housing 20 art installations, yet still able to be efficiently dismantled and rebuilt as it continues on its grand nomadic adventure.

 

 

"It is more landscape than architecture, so fluid and suspended that Zaha Hadid's nomadic building seems almost virtual. She did not conceive a nomadic museum, but a space, at once a landscape inhabited by the artists installations, and a capsule capable of moving," says Fabrice Bousteau.

 

The exhibition, which visitors are guided through via a specially-created soundtrack on individual MP3 players, is in eight sequences, with each sequence comprising several of the art installations. The individual installations are born of lengthy collaborations between the artists and the French fashion house, some stretching as long as two years.

 

An extraordinary creative event this might be, yet it is not an unexpected venture for Chanel, a very modern brand, to embark on. Creativity and experimentation have always been at the heart of the legendary fashion house, and Karl Lagerfeld continues to innovate, astound and provoke in his designs. Label founder Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was herself a great supporter of the arts, counting Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Serge Diaghilev, Igor Stravinsky and Jacques Lipchitz amongst her friends and collaborators.

 

 

"Mobile Art extends this history of Chanel's involvement in the arts into the future. It is a revolutionary event, uniting one of the greatest architects of our time, some of our most innovative artists, and an icon of the fashion world: the quilted bag," says Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel's President des Activities Mode.

 

"Mobile Art allows a different perspective of our brand to be exposed, while enriching our culture with entirely new elements. Mobile Art is founded in the continuity of Gabrielle Chanel's strong relationship with the arts, and reaffirms once more our devotion to creativity and to the avant-garde."

 

By Carolyn Ford