Fondation Louis Vuitton marks dual anniversaries with a diasporic exploration of identity, material, and myth
Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo presents an exhibition dedicated to South Asian diaspora artist Rina Banerjee, marking both the 20th anniversary of the Espaces Louis Vuitton and the 10th anniversary of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s Hors-les-murs programme. The exhibition, titled You made me leave my happy home to become someone else anew, in diasporas without origin to be related again this is living and in this waits the joy of one earthly place, hope of eternal intimacy. Intimate in Nature., brings together a selection of works from the Fondation’s Collection, continuing its mission to extend its cultural programming beyond Paris to a global audience.
Banerjee’s practice is defined by a distinctive assemblage of materials that speak to the legacies of colonialism and global exchange. Her sculptures and installations incorporate found objects such as textiles, feathers, ostrich eggs, and glass chandeliers, alongside domestic elements including cotton thread and coconut powder—materials often sourced from what the artist refers to as “the tropical zone.” Drawing from visual traditions including Indian miniature painting, Chinese silk works, and Aztec imagery, her compositions exist between abstraction and representation, resisting the colonial gaze while constructing layered, sensorial narratives.
“The viewer is both pleasured by the exotic object and simultaneously perplexed by its assertion,” Banerjee has said, underscoring the tension that animates her work. Across nearly three decades, her practice has engaged themes of migration, identity, trade, climate, and the interplay between tradition and modernity, often through a postcolonial feminist lens. Her sculptural figures—varied in scale, color, and form—seek to reframe representations of femininity, “invested in freeing the Goddess from the male gaze, freeing her from the sexualized […] representations that dominate the cultural imaginary.”
The Tokyo exhibition features nineteen works spanning installations, sculptures, and paintings, anchored by the monumental In an unnatural storm a world fertile, fragile and desirous, polluted with excess pollination… (2008), presented for the first time by the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Suspended from the ceiling in a dome-like structure with cascading elements, the work reflects both the wonder and precarity of global travel, drawing inspiration from Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. It is presented alongside Black Noodles (2023), an installation examining the international trade of human hair and its political implications.
Also included are recent paintings created in 2026, in which Banerjee integrates South Asian iconographies and materials to form female figures that echo Hindu goddesses. Across the exhibition, her work articulates a fluid, transnational conception of identity, shaped by movement across geographies and time.
As part of the Hors-les-murs programme—also presented in Munich, Venice, Beijing, Seoul, and Osaka—the exhibition reflects Fondation Louis Vuitton’s ongoing commitment to international cultural dialogue, situating Banerjee’s practice within a broader global and institutional context.
Photos – Jeremie-Souteyrat – Courtesy Louis Vuitton