Chanel Unveils Sino-French Artist Lineup for Le19M’s Shanghai Moment

LONDON — The next chapter of Le19M, Chanel’s Métiers d’Art hub, in Shanghai will be defined as much by the artists as by the ateliers.

For the upcoming edition of La Galerie du 19M, the Parisian couture house on Tuesday unveiled the first batch of a diverse roster of Chinese and French creatives — Ding Yi, Yin Xiuzhen, Shen Yuan, Wu Jian’an, Bi Rongrong and Qian Lihuai, alongside Diane Chéry, Deborah Fischer, Mathilde Albouy and Julian Farade — to develop new commissions in collaboration with Chanel’s network of specialist ateliers. More names will be revealed in due course.

Their works will form the backbone of “A Sense of Touch,” or Chù Pèng in Chinese Pinyin, a group exhibition conceived as a living laboratory of cross-cultural craft. The show is being curated by an editorial committee of Gong Yan, Lin Tianmiao, Zhang Lei and Christelle Kocher. It is aimed at asking the question of what will happen when embroidery, pleating and feather work meet lacquer, bamboo weaving or ceramics in the city, famously known as the Paris of the East.

“As the exhibition title suggests, ‘A Sense of Touch’ creates connections between people, between people and memory, between people and life,” said Gong, artistic director of Power Station of Art in Shanghai, a strategic partner of Chanel since 2024.

She described the exhibition as “a living, growing garden” where Chinese and French artists, designers, and artisans will “converge and interact, continuously challenging conventional perceptions of materiality and tradition.”

For the Beijing-based contemporary artist Lin, the commissions push craft beyond nostalgia.

“The hand is the most beautiful and extraordinary tool,” she said, arguing that art and craftsmanship have evolved together, extending into the “complex and ever-changing realities of contemporary life.”

She envisioned the Shanghai showcase as a “dialogue between hands that transcends time, geography, and identity,” one that both obeys “our deepest intuitive impulses” and infuses visitors with “a mysterious, alluring energy.”

Zhang, founder and director of Pinwu Design Studio and a longtime advocate for rethinking Chinese craft, framed the project as an experiment rather than a preservation exercise.

“The future of traditional crafts lies not in mere preservation, but in deconstruction, learning, experimentation, and creation. The future of craftsmanship must advance toward art, toward the avant-garde, and toward the young,” he said.

Bringing Chinese and French handcrafts and artists together in Shanghai is “an artistic practice of spiritual connection between Chinese and French crafts,” Zhang added.

Kocher, artistic director of feather specialist Lemarié and Atelier Lognon, which specializes in pleating, viewed the commissions as a composite portrait of two cultures that share a belief in openness.

“Together, they form a living, composite conversation between two cultures that have made openness their deepest strength. What the hand carries, in the end, is not only technique. It carries a way of being in the world,” she said.

These new works will debut as part of La Galerie du 19M Shanghai, running from Sept. 25 to Nov. 15 on the entire third floor of the Museum of Art Pudong, which offers panoramic views of the Bund.

Founded by Chanel in Paris in 2021, Le19M brings together 11 maisons d’art and nearly 700 artisans and experts in fashion and decoration, and serves as the home of La Galerie du 19M, its public-facing cultural space.

The Shanghai iteration follows previous stops in Dakar, Marseilles and Tokyo, but shifts the emphasis firmly toward Sino-French exchange. An introductory section designed by Studio Adrien Gardère will spotlight the savoir-faire of Le19M’s 11 resident maisons d’art, focusing on the gestures, tools, materials and creative processes that define them.

Running in parallel to “A Sense of Touch,” La Galerie du 19M Shanghai will unveil a newly conceived edition of “Lesage: 100 Years of Fashion and Decoration,” developed jointly by Lesage and Émilie Hammen. The retrospective will trace a century of embroidery and weaving at the storied house, a close Chanel partner since 1924, and pay tribute to its long-standing ties with China.

La Galerie du 19M Shanghai’s graphic identity was designed by French artistic director Eric Pillault and Chinese artistic director Ying Lei. Inspired by the kite, both a metaphor and a vehicle between heaven and earth, while linking two cultures across Eurasia, they approached the project with a blend of “poetry, form and graphic precision.” They also drew on the French word for the kite, cerf-volant, meaning flying stag. The stag was one of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s favorite animals.

Beyond the exhibitions, a cultural program of talks, hands-on workshops and public guided tours will further unpack the métiers d’art, with booking details to be released via Le19M’s official WeChat account and Mini Program.