Big Chief Demond Melancon’s work is among the first encountered upon entering “In Minor Keys,” the late Koyo Kouoh’s exhibition for the 61st Venice Biennale. His monumental ceremonial suits introduce visitors to the extraordinary visual language of New Orleans Black Masking Culture, a more than 250-year-old tradition rooted in community, performance, storytelling, and collective memory. Constructed entirely by hand through dense beadwork, feathers, and rhinestones, Melancon’s works bring histories of Black excellence, resistance, spirituality, and cultural transmission into vivid material form. In Venice, he also activated his Jah Defender suit through Blessing the Ancestors, a procession through the Giardini shaped by movement, sound, ritual, and an unexpected rainfall that he understood as an ancestral response.
Ahead of his first solo exhibition with Mariane Ibrahim in 2027, Whitewall spoke with Big Chief Demond Melancon about Venice, his New Orleans studio, the responsibilities of being a Big Chief, and why his beadwork must remain undeniable.
Honoring the Ancestors at the Venice Biennale
WHITEWALL: Your work is one of the first things visitors encounter upon entering “In Minor Keys.” What did that placement within Koyo Kouoh’s exhibition mean to you?
BIG CHIEF DEMOND MELANCON: The placement meant the world to me because, you know, a more than 250-year-old culture, Black Masking, is now at the forefront of the biggest art exhibition in the world. So, it represents all the elders who came before me. That is one of the biggest honors in the world for me. The energy that people felt is the energy that I wanted people to feel from Blessing the Ancestors: The energy of me wearing it and the vibe of it taking over the space once it was on the plinth.
“The energy that people felt is the energy that I wanted people to feel,”…