DUBAI: Part-Arab model Shanina Shaik turned heads in sculptural bubble dress at the National Gallery of Victoria Gala this weekend in Melbourne, Australia.
The Australia-born model — who is of Saudi, Pakistani and Lithuanian descent — made headlines for her unique dress, which she showed off at the opening of the gallery’s landmark Yayoi Kusama exhibition.
The tartan gown was created by emerging Melbourne-based designer Jarrod Reid. It featured puffed sleeves, eyelets down the front, and what looked like two inflated rings on top of each other at the hem.
The model told Mercedes-Benz in a video clip that the gown was “inspired by Scottish folklore.”
Featuring 200 works and spanning the 80-year career of the iconic Japanese artist, the exhibition includes sculpture, painting, collage, fashion and films, as well as the global premiere of Kusama’s new infinity mirror room artwork titled “My Heart is Filled to the Brim with Sparkling Light.”
The exhibition also includes the Australian debut of “Dancing Pumpkin,” 2020, a five-meter-tall yellow-and-black polka-dotted sculpture.
“Do you mind if I brag?” Wayne Crothers, the NGV’s senior curator of Asian art, told The Guardian in an interview regarding the show’s scale and artworks. While there have been other shows by the artist staged with “about 20 or 30 more works,” this is the biggest ever in terms of scale, the newspaper reported.
The 95-year-old artist is one of the world's most celebrated living creatives — she has her own five-storey gallery in Tokyo and is arguably as recognizable as her work. A giant inflatable sculpture of her was recently perched on the side of Louis Vuitton’s flagship store in Paris.
Shaik told Mercedes-Benz in the sponsored video that she is looking forward to taking her son Zai Adesuyan Matthew, whom she shares with partner Matthew Adesuyan, to the show.
In May, the model took part in her first International Mother’s Day campaign with her toddler, who was born in September 2022.
“Motherhood has changed me in so many ways… it’s definitely created more patience,” Shaik joked in the video campaign that she shared with her 3.4 million followers on Instagram.
“Now that I’m a mother, I would like to say to my mother, ‘I understand.’ I understand the worry, the concern, because you just want to protect your child every day at all costs,” she added.
