By Jenna Ross | Staff writer Jun 2, 2026 | For NOLA.com
Big Chief Demond Melancon performed in one of his plumed and sequined suits at the start of the Venice Biennale.
An exhibition at the center of the art world starts and ends with New Orleans.
Earlier this month, Big Chief Demond Melancon kicked off the Venice Biennale in Italy, arguably the contemporary art world’s most important exhibition, with beads, plumes and song. Wearing a grand, chartreuse suit, Melancon and members of the Young Seminole Hunters from the Lower 9th Ward beat tambourines.
Titled “Blessing the Ancestors,” the performance helped launch the exhibition and its theme, “In Minor Keys,” in early May, where he was one of two New Orleans artists featured in the prestigious central group show.
Then, in the historic venue’s final room, artist Dawn DeDeaux, a daughter of New Orleans, is exhibiting works new and old, drawing from dirt to stardust.
New Orleans artist Dawn DeDeaux is showing works new, old and reimagined in the prestigious Venice Biennale.
One work is new: A small meteor rotates atop a desk. The desk’s drawer is ajar, revealing glowing light. Meanwhile, a projection of a similar space rock tumbles behind it, as if headed toward the room.
“The space is so spectacular,” said Arthur Roger, whose Arthur Roger Gallery represents DeDeaux and who attended the opening. But the grand old building, part of a former shipyard, also added complications: “It’s not just a blank canvas; you’re working with a pretty complex area.”
So DeDeaux had to translate her conceptual pieces, “a challenge on top of all the challenges of just getting there.”
In the end, Roger said, the team was thrilled: “She was over the moon.”
New Orleans artist Dawn DeDeaux is showing works new, old and reimagined in the prestigious Venice Biennale.
The exhibition, curated by the late Koyo Kouoh, runs through November, but the reviews are out. Here’s a roundup of the media coverage:
Video of Melancon’s performance sat atop The New York Times’ coverage of the exhibition.
“Once again, digital media take a back seat to textiles, ceramics, folklorism and pageantry,” critic Jason Farago wrote in his review, “a tone set right from the start, with plumed and sequined regalia for Mardi Gras celebrations designed by Big Chief Demond Melancon of New Orleans.”
Big Chief Demond Melancon’s performance and suits, on display, were among the stars of this year’s Venice Biennale.
“I find plenty to like,” wrote critic Ben Davis, of Artnet. “I like the giant, detailed red feathered costume-cum-sculpture created by Big Chief Demond Melanchon [sic] of New Orleans, which opens the freshly renovated Central Pavilion.”
Kouoh’s spirit is “particularly present” in the main pavilion in the Giardini, Hyperallergic’s editor-in-chief Hakim Bishara wrote in his review of the show. There, “you’re welcomed by a plumed and beaded Mardi Gras costume by Young Seminole Hunter tribe Big Chief Demond Melancon, a leading figure in New Orleans’s Black Masking tradition.
“It’s glorious …”
In its list of the Biennale’s “shows you don’t want to miss,” Christie’s included DeDeaux and a photograph of her artworks, including a new iteration of her work with burned timber fragments.
The piece, “Burnt Chimes: In Minor Keys for Koyo Kouoh,” is among several homages to the exhibition’s curator, who spent time in the studios of DeDeaux and Melancon in 2023. Kouoh died last year, just days before the exhibition’s theme was announced.
Celebrated multimedia artist Dawn DeDeaux, whose work finds beauty in calamity, poses in her studio at Camp Abundance in New Orleans in March. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
“The exhibition closes with an installation by the New Orleans artist Dawn DeDeaux,” Christie’s notes, “who has been grappling with the consequences of Hurricane Katrina since 2005.”
Artsy also included DeDeaux in its collection of “5 Trends Shaping the 2026 Venice Biennale.”
“Raw materials like earth, salt, and sand, which bear associations with national identity and environment, play a major role for many Biennale artists,” the critics wrote. “In the main exhibition, American artist Dawn DeDeaux’s Dirt Bowl Table (2021) features 64 wooden bowls of varying sizes filled with ash and earth.”
Those wooden bowls of dirt, elegantly displayed, hail from every continent. In one: earth from Kouoh’s hometown in Cameroon.