Big Chief Demond Melancon’s Work Comes to
Peter Anthony Fine Art
May 14, 2025–Peter Anthony Fine Art is proud to welcome New Orleans-born artist Demond Melancon, also known as Big Chief Demond Melancon, to its roster of artists. Internationally recognized for his intricate, hand-sewn beaded suits, Melancon’s work reflects more than three decades of cultural dedication, historical research, and artistic innovation rooted in the Black Masking tradition.
As Big Chief of the Young Seminole Hunters, Melancon leads a tradition rooted in the late 19th century, when African American and Afro-Caribbean communities, excluded from white-led Carnival celebrations, developed their own vibrant cultural expressions. Each year on Mardi Gras, the Mardi Gras Indians parade through New Orleans neighborhoods, unveiling hand-sewn suits, performing tribal chants, and engaging in ceremonial encounters with other tribes.
Each of his monumental suits is sculpted to his body, composed of tens of thousands of hand-sewn glass beads and sequins. Some take months to complete and weigh up to 150 pounds. In 2017, Melancon began applying these beading techniques to contemporary portraiture, bridging traditional cultural practice with fine art.
Peter Anthony Fine Art will showcase Melancon’s beaded portraits, which reimagine African and Indigenous histories while confronting clichéd and often stereotypical representations of Black identity. His portraits reclaim narratives long excluded from mainstream art history, using the bead as a critical contemporary medium.
Melancon’s work powerfully repositions overlooked subjects and traditions, expanding the language of portraiture through meticulous craftsmanship and visual storytelling. He is among the few artists pioneering the use of glass beads within contemporary fine art, redefining their role as both material and message.
His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (Brooklyn), Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (Charleston), Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (Michigan), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney), and Arthur Roger Gallery (New Orleans). His pieces are held in the permanent collections of institutions such as the International African American Museum, Toledo Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, and LSU Museum of Art.
Melancon was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship in 2023 and the Gibbes Museum’s 2024 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art.
Peter Anthony Fine Art is located at 15 Broad Street in Charleston, SC. For more information, please contact Kaitlin Bellune at [email protected].
