Dior Lady Art #3 Is 11 Women Artists Worldwide, Inspiring 2019 AOC Study of Their Extreme Talent

Dior Creative Director Maria Grazia Chiuri launched her third Dior Lady Art project in early December 2018, at Miami’s Art Basel. For the first time, this third edition of the maison’s creative initiative, Dior Lady Art, is comprised of an all-woman cast of 11 artists transforming the classic Lady bag into works of art, The bags will now launch in January 2019 in expanded artistry by the same women at select Dior outlets worldwide. (See prior Dior Lady Art projects here. )

Earlier this week, Vogue.com profiled Danish jeweler and ceramist Jo Riis-Hansen, and her words got my attention. “I think the world is so fast,” says Riis-Hansen from her hometown, as her children, 10 and 6, play in the background. “I love fashion, I do, but it’s so fast. I think jewelry needs to slow down a bit, too. [When you buy a piece of jewelry] I think it’s important to [ask]: Where does it come from? Who is this person that made it? Did someone actually put real human or spiritual energy it? That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t buy the fast-fashion [stuff], I’m just pursuing another way of making jewelry, one that [fulfills] a personal need for me, to be able to put all these emotions into [my work].”

In our fast-paced, digital and often disposable world, we rarely understand the answers to Riis-Hansen’s questions. Yet, it’s well known that younger people, in particular, are very focused on these questions about the projects they are buying into.

It’s my intention to answer these questions around my own GlamTribal Design Collection. But after installing this rather laborious entry around Dior Lady Art handbags, it occurs to me that we have a wonderful foundation from which to explore these women artists — their work, their philosophies around art, life, politics and all related topics. We can track their exhibitions and their communities, the experiences that have informed their artistic visions in an ongoing project throughout 2019.

As opposed to this post being just another fashionable data bit in the glut of information on the Internet, we will slow down a bit and really understand the women artists who were chosen by Dior Creative Director Maria Grazia Chiuri to represent this great luxury brand in its third Dior Lady Art initiative.

Such an ongoing project is of little interest to most fashion bloggers or on-the-run content readers. But as AOC prepares a host of new social and digital media initiatives for 2019 — including Apple News — we want to stand out from the shrinking crowd of image-only fashion bloggers.

AOC doubled all our key stats last year. The challenge now is how to keep going, and Dior’s Lady Art project just gave us one foundational idea of how to build unique content of lasting value. Details will follow before Jan. 1, 2019. ~ Anne

Burçak Bingöl

Turkish artist Burçak Bingöl’s works explore notions of belonging, cultural heritage, identity, decoration and failure by blurring the boundaries between these seemingly distinct notions.  Burçak Bingöl (b.1976) was born in Görele; raised in Ankara;  she lives and works in Istanbul. Burçak Bingöl’s website.

Haruka Kojin

Haruka Kojin was born in Hiroshima, Japan, and is most famous for her "contact lens" series of installations, which reflected everything from blooming flowers to golden feathers, anchored in her childhood vision free from conventional thinking but also anchored at times in fear.

Isabelle Cornaro

French artist Isabelle Cornaro employs painting, sculpture, installation, and film in her quest to challenge the way viewers perceive art objects. Her multimedia works orchestrate careful juxtapositions that pay tribute to and reinvent traditional modes of representation. 

Janaina Tschäpe

Janaina Tschäpe was born in 1973 in Munich, Germany and was raised in Sao Paolo, Brazil.  Her interdisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, photography, video and sculpture. Incorporating elements of aquatic, plant, and human life, Tschäpe’s universe of sublime forms shift between representation, fantasy and abstraction. Janaina Tschäpe website.

Lee Bul

Lee Bul is a contemporary sculpture and installation artist who appeared on the art scene in the late 1980s. Her work questions patriarchal authority and the marginalization of women by revealing ideologies that permeate our cultural and political spheres. Lee Bul website.

Li Shurui

Li Shurul is one of the few female Chinese artists with regular solo shows. She is recognized for her large-format, captivating acrylic-on-canvas compositions executed with the airbrush. Her exploration of how light and space influence emotion has made her a favorite at galleries worldwide. Li Shurul website.

Mickalene Thomas

Mickalene Thomas, b. 1971, is a contemporary African-American visual artist best known as a painter of complex works using rhinestones, acrylic, and enamel. Her work draws from Western art history, pop art and visual culture to examine ideas around femininity, beauty, race, sexuality, and gender. Best known for her mixed-medium works of art, the African-American artist often tackles issues of race, gender, and sexuality in her pieces. Mickalene Thomas website.

Morgane Tschiember

Morgane Tschiember is a French sculptor who explores inter-dimensional relationships and the balance that must exist among space, time, and beauty.  The artist considers herself as "classic" in the sense that she works on fundamental elements such as form, color, material... that are universals and run through all of art history. But Tschiember also explores, in a very personal and innovative way the new possibilities of painting and sculpture, revealing her interest in how meaning ‘shifts’ . After all, the artist believes that ‘reality’ cannot reside in a single interpretation of a piece of artworik.

Olga de Amaral

Olga de Amaral is a Colombian visual artist, creating new large-scale, site-specific abstract works at age 86. Using a base of intertwined linen fibers, the artist covers each piece with layers of gesso and various pigments, resembling surfaces of light. Amaral pulls inspiration from Colombia’s artisanal culture and landscapes, pre-Colombian textiles, Indian basketry, gold artifacts, mathematics, and geometry. Olga de Amaral website.

Pae White

Pae White is a contemporary American artist who creates large-scale, mixed-media installations focused on shifting associations with familiar objects.

"My art has attempted to subvert the viewer's expected relationship to an everyday object, nudging them off balance, encouraging a deeper look," says White. "For the last several years, my practice has focused on an exploration of the neglected, the forgotten, the spaces between things, even the things between things. I am equally drawn to the temporary, the fleeting, to the ephemera of everyday life."

Polly Apfelbaum

Polly Apfelbaum is an American contemporary visual artist, known primarily for her colorful drawings, sculptures, and fabric floor pieces, which she refers to as "fallen paintings". An Apfelbaum installation often assembles rugs, beads, clay tablets, wood icons to create a modern, secular experience anchored in historical, archaeological inspiration. Polly Apfelbaum website.