Foundation Louis Vuitton Unveil Virgil Abloh 'Coming of Age' Exhibition

In 2019, Virgil Abloh curated a group exhibition titled Coming of Age in Los Angeles, which centred around the concept of diversities and complexities of male youth and boyhood - traversing class, race, and social economics - all themes pertinent to Virgil Abloh's boundary-breaking work.

Presented in creative partnership with Little Big Man Gallery, the exhibition ended up touring around the world over the next three years (with a minor break due to COVID, of course), travelling to Beijing, Milan, New York, Munich, Tokyo and Seoul. Each city's variation of the show was set up to allow students, artists, and local communities access to a DIY 'copy centre', where they could build and create their own zines with their favourite artworks from the exhibition. With each zine created being totally unique to the person behind it, the exhibition became influenced by hundreds of different voices worldwide.

Finally arriving in Paris, Coming of Age will take up space at the Frank Gehry-designed Foundation Louis Vuitton for two weeks from 13 April, an extension of the original global Coming of Age exhibition in honour and loving memory of Abloh. The showcase regroups, reimagines and expands this original exhibition and its narrative, paying tribute to a hands-on creator by encouraging active participation through combining physical events and digital activations. Visitors, therefore, become participants alongside artists, photographers, musicians, directors, and animators, creating a space open to the aspirations of people from all walks of life, all ages, all genders and all races; something no one did better than Abloh himself.

The exhibition is open to the public, free of charge, from 13 to 27 of April, 2022.