Mardi Gras Indian at Venice

Demond Melancon, a New Orleans artist and Big Chief, has been invited to the 2026 Venice Biennale, becoming the first Black Masking Indian included in the exhibition. (nola.com) La Biennale di Venezia listed Melancon among 111 invited participants for its 61st International Art Exhibition, “In Minor Keys,” curated by Koyo Kouoh. The show opens to the public on May 9, 2026, and runs through November 22 in Venice. (labiennale.org) Melancon is one of two New Orleans artists selected for the 2026 exhibition, alongside Dawn DeDeaux. New Orleans & Company said they are the only artists from the American Gulf South in this year’s international exhibition. (neworleans.com) Black Masking Indians, often called Mardi Gras Indians, are Black New Orleans cultural groups whose members spend months sewing hand-beaded suits that appear on Mardi Gras Day and at spring gatherings such as Super Sunday. The tradition in New Orleans dates back more than 200 years, according to Melancon’s website and other local accounts. (demondmelancon.com) Melancon began masking in 1992 and spent more than 15 years as a Spy Boy with the Seminole Hunters before elders named him Big Chief of the Young Seminole Hunters in 2012. His tribe is based in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. (demondmelancon.com) His art practice uses the same hand-sewn glass-bead techniques as his ceremonial suits, but he also makes portraits and large wall works for galleries and museums. His website says his 2026 suit, “The Amistad Takeover,” centers on the 1839 revolt aboard the Amistad. (demondmelancon.com) Kouoh’s curatorial text for “In Minor Keys” places Melancon’s work in a larger Afro-Atlantic tradition of procession, carnival, and collective gathering. The Biennale says those ideas will unfold across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and other Venice sites. (labiennale.org) Melancon’s invitation lands after a wider rise in museum and media attention. He was a 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellow, and recent coverage from CBS News and The New York Times has focused on the labor, symbolism, and scale of his beadwork. (joanmitchellfoundation.org) For Melancon, the Venice invitation moves a neighborhood-rooted Black New Orleans practice onto one of contemporary art’s biggest stages. For Venice visitors, it means a tradition usually seen in New Orleans streets will enter the Biennale as contemporary art in its own right. (nola.com)