Mardi Gras Indian lands in Venice

Big Chief Demond Melancon of New Orleans has been selected for the 2026 Venice Biennale, becoming the first Black Masking Indian included in the exhibition. (theadvocate.com) La Biennale di Venezia said its 61st International Art Exhibition, titled *In Minor Keys*, runs from May 9 to November 22, 2026, with previews on May 6, 7, and 8. The Biennale said the main exhibition includes 111 invited participants. (labiennale.org) New Orleans & Company said Melancon and artist Dawn DeDeaux are the first two artists from New Orleans invited to the Biennale’s international exhibition since 2015. The tourism group said they are the only artists from the American Gulf South in the 2026 show. (neworleans.com) Melancon is Big Chief of the Young Seminole Hunters, a Black Masking tribe based in the Lower Ninth Ward. His artist biography says he joined the Seminole Hunters as a Spy Boy and was named Big Chief of the Young Seminole Hunters in 2012. (demondmelancon.com) Black Masking Indians, also called Mardi Gras Indians, are Black New Orleans cultural groups known for hand-sewn suits covered in beads, feathers, and rhinestones. CBS News reported that tribe members spend months and thousands of dollars making new suits each year for Mardi Gras day. (cbsnews.com) CBS News said historians have traced the tradition to the mid-1800s, and community members describe it as a way to honor Native people who sheltered enslaved people who escaped. The New Orleans Public Library said masking also became a way for Black residents to claim public space in a city that often denied that presence. (cbsnews.com, nolalibrary.org) Melancon’s work moves between street tradition and gallery art. His website says he began making beadwork in 1992 and, by 2017, had started building a contemporary art practice that uses the same hand-sewn glass-bead techniques as his masking suits. (demondmelancon.com, demondmelancon.com) That crossover has expanded quickly. Melancon’s website lists recent international exhibitions in Sydney and Venice, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation named him a 2023 fellow. (demondmelancon.com, joanmitchellfoundation.org) The 2026 Biennale will proceed with the exhibition plan created by curator Koyo Kouoh, who died before the show opened. Biennale organizers said they are carrying out the exhibition as she conceived it, and New Orleans news outlets reported that Kouoh personally selected Melancon before her death. (labiennale.org, nolanewswire.com) For Melancon, the Venice invitation puts a practice built with needle, thread, and street ritual inside one of the art world’s biggest recurring exhibitions. For Black Masking culture, it places a New Orleans form that was long treated as local or folkloric in the Biennale’s central international conversation. (theadvocate.com, labiennale.org)