Since 2011, Miuccia Prada, the patron saint of smart, messy women everywhere, has been using her Miu Miu line as a platform to commission short films by female filmmakers from around the world, including Janicza Bravo, Mati Diop and Haifaa al-Mansour. For Mrs. Prada, the films, which sometimes air during her fashion shows, serve as a backdrop to her clothes, which have always explored the chaotic lives of mothers, sisters, rebels, poets and punks without ever trying to reconcile their contradictions. That has made Miu Miu the darling of the fashion industry, the rare fashion brand to experience explosive growth at a time when sales in general are slowing.
Last year, during Art Basel Paris, Mrs. Prada decided it was time to bring all the films together, and she enlisted the Polish artist Goshka Macuga to help. The result was an immersive performance piece of sorts that involved a cast of 35 characters from the films, brought to life by 105 different actors. It was such an unexpected hit, with 11,000 people visiting the Paris show during its five-day run, that she and Ms. Macuga decided to recreate it this weekend for Frieze New York.
The new show, entitled “Tales & Tellers,” is being staged in the Terminal Warehouse, the cavernous late-19th-century building on the Far West Side of Manhattan, latterly home to the Tunnel nightclub. And it is an altogether darker take on the state of women than the Paris event was. (Still, wardrobe by Miu Miu.)
Mrs. Prada and Ms. Macuga Zoomed in to explain. The conversation has been edited and condensed.
There hasn’t been a Miu Miu show in New York in decades, but now there is. Sort of. Why this?
MIUCCIA PRADA The clothes are an excuse to have the support of the company to create these projects where women are talking about themselves, which is very important. In my work, I have always embraced the complexity of women, the complexity of our lives, how we can succeed in developing our abilities. So it’s fundamental to know what women do, what they think, in different contexts.
GOSHKA MACUGA All these different stories represent different social problems for women in different countries. Like, for example, the film which I feel very close to, “Nightwalk” by Małgorzata Szumowska, was filmed in Poland at a time when gender issues were really repressed by our government. It was talking about this idea of liberation within a context that was not sympathetic to difference.
That sounds like the current state of America. Is that why you wanted to bring the show here?
PRADA Not just America. Conservatism is everywhere in Europe. We are facing these really great problems, and this moment is really scary. So it’s a very crucial argument — that everybody has the right to their voice.
MACUGA We are taking it to the American, or New York, street at night and trying to imagine how a woman exists within this context. It’s more threatening, it’s more surreal. We’re looking at the concept of inside and outside, the idea of individuals coming together in a group and being empowered. How all these individual voices can come together and make a big impact.
Is this also the way you raise your voice?
PRADA It’s hard for me to talk about politics because I am a representative of luxury. That’s a very privileged group of people, so to translate that in a real democratic way is not obvious. So I try in my own way to be political, but I have to be very careful how I make it public.
MACUGA Artists can use language that allows certain narratives to still be present, but maybe present under the umbrella of a more coded language. You’re not directly addressing anything or making a statement, but you’re creating the possibility for people to project certain ideas into it.
PRADA What I hope is that people who come to the show feel they can express themselves — their ideas, their problems, their weakness, their struggle. We are basically saying that change or building relationships or empowerment happens on a human level, in the instantaneous relationships that we make with other people.
Why is that important now?
MACUGA Clearly we cannot take for granted certain positive things that happen for women in society. Governments change, politics change, and the situation of women changes with that.
PRADA Women’s liberation is not concluded at all. Sometimes, it looks like we are going backward. There is still a lot of work to do.
Is that what you are trying to convey with clothes?
PRADA I try to make my contribution with the instrument I have. When you make clothes, you are suggesting possible ways of being. I am fixated on the word “useful.” I want to try to be useful. Basically, I have the Prada Foundation, our museum. I have the fashion lines. And this is something in between that seems the most promising because it is simple. There’s more excitement, less pressure, attached to it.
What do you mean?
PRADA First, when we made these little movies, no one cared one bit. We showed them at the Venice Film Festival, in a very serious environment. Then I wanted to do an exhibit at the Prada Foundation about feminism, but while curators are used to curating objects and art, there are no curators for ideas, so it’s very difficult.
But adding the fashion environment attracts many more people and allows this idea to become much more popular, much more diffused. Suddenly, with this, everybody immediately understood. It somehow accelerated the process, and we wanted to push that. This is one of the miracles of fashion.
