Miu Miu’s multidisciplinary project Tales & Tellers arrived in New York last week, transforming Manhattan’s Terminal Warehouse into a surreal, immersive space that blurs the boundaries between art, fashion, and performance.
Originally conceived by artist Goshka Macuga and curated by Elvira Dyangani Ose, the director of MACBA, the installation builds upon Miuccia Prada’s long-standing commitment to spotlighting female creatives through the brand’s Women’s Tales film series and artistic runway presentations.
Over the past couple of decades, fashion and art have become more intertwined than ever—consider the raft of collaborations and sponsorships that we see on runways and in museums on a regular basis. Few people in fashion, however, have embraced the art world more seriously—or confidently—than Miuccia Prada. An active collector herself, she has put Milan on the contemporary art map with the Fondazione Prada, which specializes in forward-thinking exhibitions that pay tribute to established artists as well as on-the-verge talents.
First unveiled in Paris in October 2024, the installation draws from Miu Miu’s creative archive—namely, seven of its runway show interventions and all 29 short films from the Women’s Tales series dating back to 2011. Each character from those works has been reimagined in live performance by actors, accompanied by video projections of the original pieces. The result is a layered and evolving narrative that reframes ideas of femininity through movement, voice, and space.
With Miu Miu, her more experimental line, Prada has promoted the arts in a very specific way. Since 2011, through her Women’s Tales project, she has commissioned female artists and directors to create films exploring the many facets of femininity, and the world around them. Now in its 28th iteration, the series has featured an impressive roster, including Agnès Varda, Janicza Bravo, Zoe Cassavetes, Miranda July, and Crystal Moselle. For the past three years, Prada has also asked artists to develop site-specific pieces at the Palais d’Iena in Paris, where the Miu Miu runway shows take place, to create a dialogue with the clothes and highlight the potential of art to move across boundaries.
In both the Paris and New York installations, the exhibition highlights every film and artistic intervention produced so far. The Tales are screened individually, and key roles in each production are reenacted live by a rotating cast of actors directed by the theater and opera director Fabio Cherstich. The idea was to create vignettes that sparked dialogue about and between the films; seeing them all together, the cumulative effect is like a torrent of experiences and sensations that jump from the screen into real life.
While the Paris debut evoked a bright, classical public square, the New York staging leans into the energy of the city’s streets after dark. Set against a moody backdrop in an almost pitch dark space, the Terminal Warehouse installation invites visitors to question their understanding of public space, intimacy, and identity.
Although the films are as diverse as the women who created them, they tackle common subjects, like the idea of vanity—a term that is often associated with superficiality, but which can also be interpreted as the way we construct a sense of self or choose to present ourselves to the world. These and other topics were addressed over a series of talks featuring panelists like Ava Duvernay, Chloé Sevigny, and Catherine Martin. “I have a history of collaborating with other artists, so perhaps that’s why I was invited to do this exhibition,” said Macuga. “There is a variety of experiences you can have here: seeing the films up close and intimately, or through the live performers.”
Perhaps one anonymous, overheard attendee put it best: “It’s like Mrs. Prada’s Eras tour,” she said.
