richard wentworth at maison alaïa

“Richard Wentworth at Maison Alaïa”, is a project specifically designed by the great British artist. This exhibition offers the public selected images giving an unprecedented insight into the life of the most secret couture house. 

For three years, the sculptor, a friend of the couturier, stayed regularly in the House, at 7 rue de Moussy, and was granted access to the manifold aspects of the Maison Alaïa, from the creative studio to the ateliers, archives and the many other spaces that constitute the life of the great couture house. We witness the creation of the couturier, the presentation of collections, the preparation of the fashion shows, the ateliers at work, but also the architecture of the industrial age buildings, whose structures Richard Wentworth reads; there are also the signs of the daily life of the community gathered around the couturier. Every image is like a still life, a fragment of life and couture, a portrait of the world of Azzedine Alaïa.

Richard Wentworth is a leading figure in contemporary art. His work is nurtured by an acute study of material culture and represents a system of revelations for the hidden meanings of things. Bringing together photography and sculpture, it highlights unexpected encounters between objects. Wentworth’s work has exerted considerable influence over generations of artists and has been presented at the Havana Biennial (2015), the Manchester International Festival (2013), the Venice Biennale, (2009, 2003) and the Istanbul Biennial (1995). He has also had solo exhibitions at some of the world’s most important institutions. In the early 1970s, Richard Wentworth began Making Do and Getting By, an ongoing major work, which today consists of more than two hundred thousand images of sculptural events observed around the world. A selection was published in 2016, in a book edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

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