‘Young Fresh Different Miami’ At Zilberman Gallery Showcases 15 Artists Under 35

 “For Oscar,” an installation by Addison Wolff, is one of the works that will be exhibited at the Zilberman gallery as part of “Young Fresh Different Miami” opening Friday, June 28 through Friday, Aug. 23 (Photo courtesy of the artist)

Earlier this year, Zilberman gallery in the Miami Design District teamed up with arts organization Fountainhead to launch “Young Fresh Different Miami,” an open call for artists under the age of 35 based in Florida.

According to the gallery, 100 applications were received and 15 were selected, most of them with works featuring topics of identity or exploring conversations around it. The work of those artists will be exhibited at the gallery from Friday, June 28 to Friday, Aug. 23.

Artists from Miami to West Palm Beach were selected and include Addison Wolff, Alberto Alejandro Rodríguez, Amanda Linares, Anna Miorelli, Chantae Elaine Wright, Chloe Sailor, Ernesto Gutíerrez Moya, Katelyn Kopenhaver, Liz Beltran, Luna Palazzolo-Daboul, Marianna Angel, Marilyn Loddi, Smita Sen, Susana Kim Alvarez, and Zoe Schweiger.

Their trajectories and backgrounds reflect Florida’s rich diversity and multiculturalism, exploring themes of personal and collective identity, cultural heritage, and self-exploration. The exhibit, representing those topics, features a variety of media, including painting, installation, video art, sculpture, and conceptual art, showcasing a wide range of artistic approaches within the region’s emerging art scene.

“This year was the first time that the initiative expanded not only to Miami, but also to Berlin, where the gallery has also a non-profit space and a gallery space as well, plus our residency. So it shows as well the expansion of Zilberman to the different communities that it is impacting through the presence of this institution in Istanbul, Berlin, and Miami,” says Gladys Garrote, one of the gallerists at Zilberman Miami.

“Young Fresh Different” (YFD) is an initiative that was created to provide a platform for highlighting the work of young artists; encouraging artistic exchange and dialogue between creatives and the gallery. Initially launched in 2009 to connect with young artists in Turkey, the location of Zilberman’s first gallery, YFD has grown into an annual group exhibition curated by an independent jury.

For the first Miami edition, the selection committee was made up of Omar Lopez-Chahoud, independent curator and the artistic director of Untitled Art Fair, artist Omar Barquet, Teresa Enriquez, collector and Fountainhead’s board vice president, and Ziberman gallerist Nazli Yayla and Garrote.

The artists selected receive a $300 honorarium for their participation and will have the opportunity to sell their artworks during the exhibition.

On that note, Garrote comments, “I think that it’s interesting to think about Zilberman as more than a commercial gallery. It’s becoming an art institution that has, of course, the main element of the gallery being a commercial gallery that represents a diverse array of artists, but it’s also an institution that is interested in impacting the communities that it’s part of. This initiative here in Miami has also allowed Zilberman to explore what is happening in the city with emerging artists. Where are their interests, where they’re going to, and (what they are) looking for? It’s been an interesting exploration in that sense, too.”

Wolff’s work, “For Oscar,” pays homage to Oscar Wilde. “Violets, pansies, green carnations, have been used throughout queer history and culture to talk about desire. Oscar Wilde used green carnations, with his cohorts, in the opening premiere of his play ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan,’ he and his gay friends wore green carnations to signal their sexual preference, or that they were part of a group. And so, I took that idea of color and, specifically the green carnation, and utilized it in my piece to color my sculpture,” says the artist, who was born in Winter Park, Fla., and now works and lives in Fort Lauderdale.

Wolff’s piece integrates elements of queer history and personal identity, using ceramics and textures to connect past and present.

“The contemporary take on that blue and white pottery . . .There’s a quote from Wilde,” and then Wolff apologizes saying, ‘This is not gonna be the perfect quote, but basically he said, ‘I’ll never be able to live up to blue and white pottery.’ Talking about beauty and standards.”

Palazzolo-Daboul created an installation composed of a painting, and a sculpture titled “A Barrier Falls Between the World and Me,” consisting of an oversized chair sculpture and a painting of a cloud. “There was a particular thing that Gertrude Stein said about liking a good view but liking to sit with her back facing it. This idea of duality, of having the options to do something and still not choosing to do so,” explains the artist, who was born in Mar del Plata,  Buenos Aires, Argentina,  and now lives and works in Miami.

Elaborating on their use of materials, Palazzolo-Daboul says, “The work surrounds this idea of freedom of choice, but also difficulties to come across the situation. And simultaneously it is placed off of the materiality that is always running my work.”

It is only the second work that Palazzolo-Daboul has welded on a rebar, they explain.

“All my work is previously mostly in cement, and if you strip down buildings, you’ll come to the rebar at the end. I wanted to keep the conceptual idea of construction and destruction and also hierarchies in which these materials are positioned.”

The artist says that their participation in the exhibition underscores the importance of providing opportunities for local artists. “Doing an open call is a great way to equalize the opportunity channels and to see what’s out there that you as a gallerist or curator might not know about. And I do think that there needs to be more (of that).”

WHAT: Young Fresh Different Miami 2024

WHERE: Zilberman Miami, 25 NE 39th St., Miami

WHEN: Friday, June 28 through Friday, Aug. 23

COST: Free

INFORMATION: (305) 603-7763 or zilbermangallery.com

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com.

Powerful installation at Locust Projects ponders complexities of aging, memory loss

“The patience of ordinary things,” a multi-spatial installation by Miami-based artist Kerry Phillips, is on view through Aug. 3 in the main room of the Locust Projects art space in Miami’s Little River neighborhood. (Photo courtesy of Pedro Wazzan)

Visual artists often draw on their most intimate, even painful experiences to create work.

In some cases, the art reflects themes of aging, memory, and the mortality of loved ones. This cathartic exercise, or epic exorcism, generally consists of documenting instances of the end of the life of a loved one. Examples abound: the visual poetics of Cuban-American artist Félix Gónzalez-Torres, closely linked to the death of his partner Ross Laycock, who died of complications from AIDS in 1991–five years before the artist’s own death.

And consider photographer David Wojnarowicz’s images of the artist Peter Hujar, his friend and former lover, at the moment of his death also from AIDS-related causes in 1987.

Especially touching is the work of French artist Sophie Calle, whose almost Brechtian installation entitled “Rachel Monique” consists of a camera continuously recording her mother while she lay dying.

It is that precise line of thought in “The patience of ordinary things,” a multi-spatial installation by Miami-based artist Kerry Phillips, on view through Saturday, Aug. 3, in the main gallery of Locust Projects’ new space in Little River.

Brimming with controlled emotions, Phillips’ piece subtly delves into the complexity of experiences surrounding the act of aging: memory loss, the passage of time, and human connection through objects, photographs, and videos of her familiar reality.

In the first stage of her installation, the artist alludes to her father through a central element (her progenitor’s antique automobile), inescapable and immobile, intended to provoke an emotional response through the viewer’s physical interaction.

Highlighting the physicality and decay of the object, Phillips also reflects on her own life. Hers is an archeology of childhood that references objects from her youth, re-manifested in the present to underscore the depth of her loss, and in turn her family legacy. Surrounding the car, a video in motion is projected on the walls displaying abstract landscapes in ink, intervened in vignettes by the artist. The white planes on which the images are projected are reminiscent of the wooden planks commonly found on the exteriors of barns in the American countryside.

“This is my dad’s car; it comes from the house I grew up in. I don’t remember riding in it, but it’s been there all my childhood. We played in it, it was always in the way,” says Phillips during an interview inside Locust Projects as she walked among the work. “I’ve been trying to decipher the sense of time, how my mom and dad have changed . . . how all of us change when we get older as if the perception of time is now so different from my perception of time.”

In another gallery space, the artist confronts us with a series of “objects-as-memory” in a deeply personal narrative that documents snapshots– from a voyeur’s perspective– of the routines of her mother. Phillips’ mother was diagnosed with dementia and was beginning to show signs of her mental deterioration.

Phillips’ observations are narrated through a sequence of images of the simple, repetitive routines that make up the new existence of her mother, once a creative and energetic woman, full of nuances. The artist deliberately chooses an “imperfect” vehicle to document these instances and the projections follow one after the other in random chains of movements.

“I am not an expert videographer but I was noticing these things that my mom was doing . . . repetitions like little rituals and it was very repetitive and a little obsessive . . . She was very focused, but why? It didn’t make sense to me or my sister or anyone else but it made sense to her and just because I might not understand it doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.”

She says she was watching her mother’s actions and realized that she had to document them.

“It wasn’t about her or her face but what was happening: her hands, the napkin, and the bowl that she kept moving. Her actions reminded me of how I make art. I take objects and I move them around … and I keep going until it feels right. These aren’t about being great videos, they’re moments, snapshots, in and out of focus, very much like memory and how we shift and change,” says the artist.

Beyond its visual and interactive elements, the exhibition meditates on modernity’s discourses on aging and mortality. Archiving mundane everyday routines offers a deeply intimate perspective on memory, and it unveils certain shifting dynamics of family and self-awareness. It offers a positive angle to the questions of death and remembrance, even though in our culture these tend to be taboo (and decidedly heavy) topics.

“When my mom was first getting really lost with memory, I was incredibly sad — I couldn’t even get off the phone with her without crying. But it felt different than just being sad, and that she was different. I realized that I was mourning a life that wasn’t even reality . . .  I figured out that I could go back to just enjoying who she is now. She’s really funny, just a goofy lady, and it’s really fun to be around her even though she’s not the same as she was,” says Phillips.

Phillips asserts that her ability to construct this piece – using random materials to support her family storytelling– has specifically to do with her father’s creativity.

This piece includes old television screens and the videos are played from media players.

“My dad never threw anything away, anything can get fixed or reused. He and my mom both grew up on farms during the Depression years (when) you didn’t have the luxury of going out and getting something; you had to make do with what you had,” she says.

Perhaps an inevitable course based on her creative and inventive parents, Phillips earned an MFA from the University of Arizona. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at institutions such as the Orlando Museum of Art, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, the Boca Raton Museum of Art and Bridge Red Projects.

“It’s so natural to use what I have on hand. My dad is a great problem solver, I got that from him — having a problem to solve and then knowing that there was a tool or something that we had on hand (usually from the backyard) to fix it,” she says.

For the project’s curator, Lorie Mertes, Phillips’ piece is perfectly in tune with Locust Projects’ purposes as an institution. “My role as curator is to support the artists at Locust in making decisions and to understand the context in which they are working. And I bring my experience and feedback to ensure that the artist takes the opportunity to experiment, take their practice in new directions, and do things that they haven’t been able to do before in other places that don’t focus on site-specific experimentation,” says Mertes.

Mertes says that Phillips’ proposal was selected from more than 150 others in Locust Projects’ 2022 annual open call for the Main Gallery.

“Hers was chosen for (the way it shows) risks and experiment, as well as for its timely relevance and innovative approach to contemporary art,” explains Mertes.

For the artist, this installation is more than “an artistic proposal.” Rather, it is an overtly intimate act of tenderness and an invocation of her eagerness to preserve her family’s history. And all roads lead to her past.

“In my last exhibition at The Bass Museum, I worked with the old carpet from my childhood bedroom,” says Phillips. “This time, when I began to reflect on the process my mother was going through, the first thing that came to mind was how my grandmother had been a wonderful mom to her — and how my mother had been (the same) to me. I haven’t married or had children, so that model of life for me exists only in documentation, in preservation, and in the telling of this story.”

WHAT:  Kerry Phillips: “The patience of ordinary things”

WHERE:  Locust Projects, 297 NE 67th St., Miami

WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Through Saturday, Aug. 3.

COST:  Free 

INFORMATION: 305-576-8570 or locustprojects.org

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com. 

 

Photo Exhibition at The Kampong Is A Significant Slice Of Local Miami History

A gallery view of the exhibition “A Lens on Community: Photographs by Klara Farkas and Georgette Ballance” at The Kampong, Coconut Grove, through Saturday, Aug. 17. (Photo courtesy of Erin Parish)

“A Lens on Community: Photographs by Klara Farkas and Georgette Ballance” is an exploration of humanity through the work of two remarkable South Florida photographers. The historically significant mother/daughter exhibition is currently on view at The Kampong in Coconut Grove, a location that reflects the intertwined relationships between histories both human and natural. Farkas (1910- 2014, Hungary) lived and worked in Coconut Grove for 70 years and passed just shy of her 104th birthday and Ballance, her daughter (1956, USA), continues to live in Miami. 

 The exhibition has two themes, unified by Farkas, portraits and the landscapes and peoples of Ethiopia. The topics are divided by location within the exhibition, installed in two separate parts of the Kampong. There are black and white portraits of historically significant Miami locals in a traditional portraiture format contrasted with photographs of the far-off land of and Ethiopia.

They differ in the presentation of personalities versus the anonymity of the Ethiopian peoples in situ, sometimes with their camels. The one exception is the inclusion of a photo of Hailie Selassie, former emperor of Ethiopia for almost 45 years. It is one of the more intensely colored images. One can sense the dryness of the locale in the way the saturation seems nearly drained from the textured photographs. 

 Photographer and much sought-after portraitist, Farkas lived and worked locally for more than 70 years. Her photos are a Who’s Who of South Florida. They tell stories of time and place, of people and their milieus. Two notable names depicted are famous painter Robert Motherwell and photographer Bernice Abbott as well as many strong, socially responsible women whose names are locally familiar and significant to the landscape of the city and of the Everglades. 

 In the early 1970s, Ballance lived and taught in Addis Ababa, immersing herself in its rich culture and history and led tours of Egypt in conjunction with the Smithsonian Museum. Before Ballance’s return to the States, her mother joined her in Ethiopia. The photographs in “A Lens on Community” are a result of that trip. Imagine the extraordinary experiences these two artists, mother and daughter, had in their undertaking of capturing Ethiopia. Many of Ballance’s photographs of Kenya, Tanzania, Morocco, and Egypt are in the archives of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. 

 After entering through a beautiful yet unassuming gate, a long driveway leads to the main house through the lush sanctuary of tropical plants and leaves to the imagination what the Miami-Dade of 100 years ago would be like. Here is the idyllic land that captured so many people’s imaginations, and pocketbooks, and inspired ecological conservation before the environment was a pressing issue. It is an impactful backdrop to an exhibition that delves deeply into the community’s past and present. 

 The property was built in 1926 by David Fairchild and his wife Marian Bell Fairchild, daughter of Alexander Graham Bell, and it serves as a perfect venue for this imagery. They built a comparatively modest house, especially by modern standards, and chose its name, The Kampong, because it translates to “a small village” in Malay. It is rich with history and contains an extraordinary collection of rare tropical plants and trees, an emblem of South Florida’s abundant botanical heritage. Fairchild traveled the world in search of crops which would thrive on American soil. Soybeans, pistachios, mangos, nectarines, dates, to name a few, are commonplace in the United States because of Fairchild.  

Botanist and preservationist Catherine Hauberg Sweeney purchased the property after Marian Bell Fairchild died in 1962. In 1984, Sweeney donated the property to the National Tropical Botanical Garden organization, which oversees the site. 

 Farkas was known for her ability to capture the characters of her subjects in an elegant manner. Her intimate portraits of South Florida’s residents include the Fairchilds, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and Alice Wainwright, who was Miami’s first female commissioner, Helen Muir, and Elizabeth Virrick, among others. Reams of text have been written about the lives of the people in these portraits. The exhibition is a jumping-off place to delve into Miami history.  

Virrick was involved in housing and urban issues in Miami-Dade County, particularly against the developing and segregating slums. Suffragist and civil rights activist, Douglas led the fight against efforts to drain the Everglades and wrote the influential “The Everglades: River of Grass“ published in 1947, which redefined the popular conception of the body of water as an actual river, not a swamp.  

 Muir authored four books on Miami’s history.  When she came to Miami, Muir was struck by the poor public libraries and was appalled that the main library was sadly in the upstairs of an office building and segregated. She was instrumental in the formation of the Miami-Dade Public Library System and the Miami International Book Fair.  

 Farkas’s work is not just a repository of images but a profound commentary on the community’s development. These portraits underscore the extensive contributions of women to the fabric of Miami and are inspiring reminders of the pivotal roles’ women have played in shaping our history and culture. Farkas’s lens is not merely a recorder of images but an interpreter of a community’s evolving narrative. 

 Ballance contributes to the Ethiopian offerings in “A Lens on Community.” She has taken on her mother’s drive to capture various cultures through her photos of people and their locales. Like her mother, Ballance’s works are part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Museum. 

Take a moment to enjoy the Lotus Pond, which you will pass on your way from the parking area, a gift from Ballance to The Kampong in memory of her mother who was involved in the creation of the Lowe Art Museum, the University of Miami, and Lowe’s Beaux Arts. She was the president of the University of Miami Women’s Guild, a board member of the Women’s Caucus for Art, a member of the League of Women Voters, and a member of the Miami Art Museum. 

 Visiting this exhibition is about more than viewing photographs; it is an opportunity to embark on a historical journey, as well as seeing how photography has changed throughout the past half-century. The setting of The Kampong, with its lush gardens and history, enriches the experience. It is a multi-sensory voyage. 

 WHAT: “A Lens on Community: Photographs by Klara Farkas and Georgette Ballance”  

WHERE: The Kampong, 4013 Douglas Road, Coconut Grove, Miami 

WHEN: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Through Saturday, Aug. 17. 

COST: The exhibition is included with garden admission. Self-guided tours: $17 for adults, $12 for seniors, 62 years old and older, and students with
valid ID, $7 for children, 6 to 17 years old, free for children under 3. Guided tour: $27 for adults, $22 for 62 years old and older and students with
valid ID, $12 for children 6 to 17 years old, free for children under 3. Reservations are encouraged and can be booked online. Admission waivers available. Call to inquire.

INFORMATION: 305-442-7169 or ntbg.org/gardens/kampong/ 

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com. 

At The Frost Art Museum, Three Artists Make ‘Of What Surrounds Me’ Larger Than Life

“Of What Surrounds Me” at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum-FIU features the works of three Miami artists: Amanda Bradley, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, and Mette Tommerup. An opening reception is Saturday, June 15. The show runs through Sunday, Sept. 15. Above, work by Mette Tommerup in the art museum’s Stella & J. Burton Orr Pavilion. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

When Mette Tommerup, one of three artists in the Patrica & Phillip Frost Art Museum-FIU’s summer exhibition, was creating her site-specific installation “Like the Body of a Flower,” she says she wanted the viewer to feel as if they were “walking through a field of wild flowers with lots and lots of colors.”  The Danish-American artist, who works out of Coconut Grove and Little Havana, created four pieces that make up the installation, each named using the line from one of Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver’s poems.

It is, in fact, a poem by Oliver in which the exhibit, which also features the work of Cristina Lei Rodriguez and Amanda Bradley, takes its name, “Of What Surrounds Me.” A contemplation and a recurring theme in Oliver’s work – of how the human and natural worlds intersect, of finding peace and serenity in nature, and, of how to navigate nature among civilization’s excess – is what the exhibit is all about.

As Oliver has said, for her, the door to the woods was a door to the temple.

Certainly, entering through the doors of the Stella & J. Burton Orr Pavilion is like walking into a temple where you are greeted by Tommerup’s Mark Rothkoesque floor-to-ceiling canvas wall tapestry “Which She Adores.” To the right, swooping from the ceiling is a red and purple 40-feet by 12-feet canvas, poppy-like with its drenched colors and translucence, almost as if looking through the petal of a flower.

Tommerup has created a giant grid of 64 modular paintings, 24 feet by 24 feet, which takes up the entire end wall of the first gallery. The title, “How to Stroll Through the Fields,” is a direct line from Oliver’s most celebrated poem, “The Summer Day.”

“It is meant to be reminiscent of sunlight as it hits a vast field,” says Tommerup.

The titles of each of the four works are taken from the poetry of Oliver and come together to form one stanza: “How to stroll through the fields /Like the body of a flower / Which she adores / Don’t you think that deserves a little thought?”

“The whole idea is to linger in this poetic space,” says Tommerup.

She also incorporates a video element, which has become increasingly integral to her practice. “Video is a freeing component and captures the canvas activation in nature. I try to remove myself from the work during these actions to allow the pieces to pave unscripted directions.” She says the video segments often require the use of a drone due to the large scale.

For Bradley, Oliver’s theme led her to incorporate her own writing into her photography.

“It does feel very serendipitous,” she says, “this exhibition coming together at a point where I felt ready to combine all of the elements and this is the first time I’m sharing writing with images.”

She describes her practice as “photographic work that explores place and landscape as a means to connect and understand identity, belonging, histories, and relationships.”

“The exploration of nature and landscape comes from my relationship to Miami and Belize,” says the Belizean American. “I grew up between the two (places) and so I think when I was younger and I got into photography, it became another layer of language for me,” she says, adding that photography was a way to understand her place in the world. “It was typically through documenting the site of home in Miami and the site of home in Belize, so I always had this kind of dual relationship with nature and landscape. I’ve gotten to see two different worlds and allow them to inform who I’ve become.”

For this show, she’s incorporated debossed text to layer the legibility of the final image and the superimposed text.

She has always kept a photo notebook. “A lot of what I write is my reflection on where I am as I am making images, or after or before.” Bradley has taken these notes and created a palindrome poem (or mirror poem) as part of her exhibition.

There are 27 works that make up the suite in the third gallery. On the interior of a freestanding wall are solarized silver gelatin prints. “These are a different body of work that I think addresses a different layer of my relationship to place.”

She shoots analog photography while today’s norm is digital, and experiments with darkroom processes that become part of the art.

“It creates a level of intimacy that’s required of visitors where they have to spend time with an image to either find the text in the images or get close to these darkroom prints to be able to decipher or understand what they’re seeing . . .”

There is also the concept of memory and time. “In all of my exhibitions, I’m always showing a huge span of time, and that’s because new images are made. But there’s still maybe something that happened three or four years ago that feels so present in what I’m trying to say.”

The passage of time also plays into the works in the middle gallery where Lei Rodriguez’s maximalist installation delves into the process of decay and the nature of resiliency. The dominant art in her exhibition is an installation piece from the collection of the Perez Art Museum titled “Endless Autumn,” an interactive sculpture of a Japanese Zen garden, which she created in 2006.

“I was thinking a lot about how the garden was a great way of conceptualizing the relationship between man and nature, and how, especially a Japanese garden, is so controlled by humans. I was wrestling with those ideas in my work of what is natural . . what is artificial and the tension between something growing wild and something being controlled.”

The monumental installation is laden with treasured objects, antiquities, and encrusted jewels. She also used plastic as a medium to make the garden. “It really epitomizes the work that I was making at that time. It is this idea of ‘it’s fake. It will last forever. The plastic is immortal.’ And of course, there’s also a critical part of that – that the plastic literally never goes away.”

There are six other pieces by Lei Rodriguez including paintings and a sculpture, entitled “Decadence Revisited” that is part of the Frost Collection.

“In talking with Amy (Galpin, the show’s curator) and Yady (Rivero, assistant curator), they helped me to think through and make connections to tie in works from the past. And I’ve been working over the last year and thinking a lot about how do I create work that feels accessible to the viewer, how do I create work that can hold an open space where someone can come and meditate, or space out, or discover something?” she says.

Lei Rodriguez mentions her affinity to poet Oliver’s work, which she says relates the writer’s own experience, but at the same time is “open enough that I can read it and have my own relationship to it.” That’s what the artist wants her work to be to a viewer.

She uses a nature metaphor – walking on a trail in a forest that is part of a larger landscape. “It doesn’t judge you. It’s just kind of a space to be yourself.”

While all three of the artists’ works are very different in approach, there’s a collective connectedness to “Of What Surrounds Me” at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum-FIU.

“There are a lot of visual connections back and forth,” says Tommerup, “and the beauty of the show is these unexpected visual gems. It demands you to slow down time and linger a while because there are so many discoveries in each work and the interconnectedness of the exhibition as a whole. There’s magic in the way that we’ve created a visual dialogue with one another.”

WHAT: “Of What Surrounds Me”: Amanda Bradley, Cristina Lei Rodriguez and Mette Tommerup

WHEN: Now through Sunday, Sept. 15, 2024. Opening reception 2 to 5 p.m., Saturday, June 15. Hours 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday.

WHERE: The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University MMC, 10975 SW 17th St.

COST: Free

INFORMATION:  305-348-2890 or frost.fiu.edu

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com. 

PAMM’s Newest Show Explores What It Means to Be Chicano – Or Chicanx

Patssi Valdez, “Hot Pink” (still), 1980-1983, is part of the Perez Art Museum Miami’s Latest art exhibition  “Xican-a.o.x. Body.” (Photo courtesy of the artist and American Federation of Arts.)

The first thing visitors may wonder about “Xican-a.o.x. Body,” the Pérez Art Museum Miami’s latest art exhibition showcasing indigenous-descended Mexican-American art and artists, is how to say its title.

The answer, according to curator Gilbert Vicario, is however you want. The “X” at the beginning is pronounced like the English “ch” as in “cheese.” The letters at the end are gender-specific, “o” for males, “a” for females, and “x” for nonbinary people. So, depending on your preference, it can be “Chicano,” “Chicana,” or “Chican-ex Body.”

It’s a title meant to reflect the diversity of identities in the show, in which 60 percent of the artists identify as queer or LGBTQ+. Yet the -x suffix may court controversy. Debates have raged in recent years around the similar term “Latinx,” which some consider an unwanted label used mainly by whites to describe Hispanics.

“It was something that came out of a North American academic context,” explains Vicario, “so it was always an argument about, ‘what is this addressing, what does it remedy? And how does it complicate when you bring terms like this into Latin America?’ It’s a whole complicated conversation.”

These debates had been going on during the planning of the show, which was prolonged due to the pandemic. Rather than scorn these new ideas around gender identity in Spanish, however, Vicario decided to “embrace” them. “In the Spanish language, you do have gender. You have gendered words, you have ‘Latino,’ ‘Latina.’ And my argument was that in the Latin community in the United States, half of us can’t speak Spanish, so it doesn’t matter.”

What does matter in “Xican-a.o.x. Body” is its scope. Featuring 150 works in multiple distinct mediums by 70 artists ranging from 28 to 87 years old, the show is a sweeping exploration of Chicana/o/x culture and identity, organized across eight thematic sections. Some artworks explore common Chicago cultural signifiers, such as lowrider cars and Cholo style. Others deal with historical and political themes, such as immigration, the prison system, labor struggles, and other sources of violence, repression, and resistance.

Photography features prominently, such as in James Luna’s “Half Indian/Half Mexican” series interrogating his own mixed identity, or Artemisa Clark’s series erasing Latin victims of state violence in news photographs, cutting out each silhouette and filling it with glitter. Subjects range from Chicano residents of Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles being forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for Dodger Stadium to the iconic photo of Elian Gonzalez confronted by federal agents in 2000.

Some of the most potent works meet these themes halfway. Esther Hernandez’s “Sun Mad III” features a Warhol-style screen printed image of the Sun-Maid Raisins mascot. Hernandez had witnessed the United Farm Workers strikes organized by César Chaves and Dolores Huerta in the Central Valley, where Sun-Maid grows its raisin grapes; her print transforms the young maiden into a skeleton in protest of the exploitation of Chicano/a/x laborers. It’s one of several pop art works that get their own section of the show, which Vicario calls its “culmination.”

“It really positions this earlier generation of artists who were working within the rubric of pop art that were never recognized, were never allowed to be part of the larger American narrative of pop art,” he says. “And it also connects with younger artists who are dealing with similar ideas around commercialization, popular images, and street culture.”

Originally set to debut at the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona, where Vicario was working at the time, it eventually debuted in 2023 at the recently-opened Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture in Riverside, California. Part of the Inland Empire region in Southern California, the change of venue allowed many of the artists in the show to attend the opening. When Vicario moved to Miami to work at PAMM in 2022, he lobbied to bring the show to the museum. He hopes the exhibition will expand knowledge and awareness of Chicano/a/x art and experience in the city and allow its diverse population to experience another distinct culture of Latin origin.

“There are a lot of commonalities, a lot of things that link us. Most of the positive reactions that I’ve gotten have been from Cuban-American curators and artists,” he says. “I think it adds to the ongoing cultural conversation around Latin American culture. That was really one of the reasons why I wanted to bring the show, because I felt like PAMM is the institution to lead that effort. And this is the kind of show we should be doing, because it will demonstrate, not only to the community here, but to the rest of the U.S., why it’s important to have these conversations.”

“Xican-a.o.x. Body” opens Thursday, June 13 during PAMM’s Pride Night event, which will feature a happy hour, DJ sets, and a live drag show hosted by Tiffany Fantasia.

WHAT: “Xican-a.o.x Body”
WHEN: 11 a.m. to 9 .p.m. Thursday; 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Monday; closed Tuesday and Wednesday.
WHERE: Pérez Art Museum Miami, 1103 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
COST: $18 for adults; $14 for seniors (62 plus with ID), and students (with ID), and those 7 to 18 years old; free for children 6 and younger, museum members, active U.S. military and veterans (with ID), disabled visitors and caregivers, healthcare professionals and first responders (with ID), Florida educators (with ID).
INFORMATION: 305-375-3000 and  pamm.org

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com

Three gallery shows look toward tradition, our digital future and a present reality

Three galleries are offering shows worth a visit this summer including “Yellowjacket_2524_Felice Grodin” at Dimensions Variable, along with “Becomes Us” at The Collective 62 and Paul Amundarain’s exhibit “Entropy, Multiple Realities” at Opera Gallery Miami. (Photo courtesy of Francesco Casale)

Galleries and smaller venues have interesting options for the art-hungry with Miami’s big shows veiled until the other side of summer. Three worth a visit are “Becomes Us,” at The Collective 62; Felice Grodin’s “Yellowjacket_2524” at Dimensions Variable, and Paul Amundarain’s exhibit titled “Entropy, Multiple Realities” at Opera Gallery Miami.

Taken together visitors encounter contemporary expressions using traditional processes; the promise of augmented reality, and the human experience filtered through  the surroundings.

At The Collective 62, artists Amy Gelb, Laura Villarreal, and Laura Marsh use sewing, embroidery and yarn to consider contemporary events. The works all play with the idea of textiles as women’s work, both celebrating the tradition and questioning how it can be used in a socially interrogatory way.

A diaphanous draped installation by Gelb, titled “Hope Becomes Us” envelops those tempted to enter. Gelb, who grew up mostly in South Florida and has strong ties to Israel, says the work is her response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. Vibrating with the shock of the event, Gelb says, “All I wanted to do was tear fabric and stitch. It started as a meditation and the next thing I know, I have panel after panel.” The floor-to-ceiling piece is Gelb’s first immersive work. Looking closely one glimpses pieces of shirts and chemises, a bit of a wedding dress, and gray-and-white photos printed on fabric.

Landscapes, identity, and personal and ancestral history are layered within Gelb’s works. “How can I pierce through time, how can I reveal this?” she asks through her process. She is often termed a photo-based fiber artist and that meaning becomes clear in her studio where large format photos are covered by a transparent, fabric layer, giving the photo a different read. It is, says Gelb, about what can and can’t be controlled.” I love fraying fabric; the kinetic threads that move when people move past them.”

Moving along the corridor, Marsh’s embroidered works enlist traditional practice for contemporary commentary. “Dear White House” is a letter about her student loans sent to President Joe Biden – and the president’s reply. Surrounding the letters are overlapping frames of material, all repurposed. Another piece, titled “Caretaking is Underrated,” references a traditional sampler. Yet the text reads “A time when Social Circles Existed,” picked out in pinks, greens and yellows on a blue background. Marsh, who started working exclusively in textiles about 10 years ago, said she wanted to honor her grandmothers. “This was a craft for them, they used it to relax,” she says. But Marsh pulls that into another direction. “I want the statements I use to be socially relevant, sometimes political,” she said. Her work, she said, “can talk about serious subjects but diffuse them through soft embroidery.”

Marsh leads an embroidery and sewing class, which has become a social circle of its own. A subtext that runs through her work is the role of women and crafts-making – noting that in many cultures men reserve to themselves the privilege of embroidery and similar arts. Yet in the West, the domestic arts are inextricably intertwined with caretaking – another interest of Marsh’s, who wonders about the future of nurturing. “I feel like we live in an era where we need to start taking care of each other,” says Marsh.

Not far from her work, red threads leap up from large crimson spools to form rhomboid-reminiscent shapes. It is part of Villarreal’s series titled “The Spaces We Inhabit.” The work has an abstract, cerebral and analytical feel. Still, its genesis is from a commonplace experience – a road trip, in this case, through Ohio and Canada. The contrast of the straight lines of the barns against the wide fields was captivating to Villarreal.

“I was primarily working in painting and overlapped into different disciplines until I found textiles and incorporated them into my work,” she says. Villarreal’s work explores a continuing theme: the duality of spaces; not just structures against landscape but domestic versus industrial spaces; plus spaces of origin contrasted with spaces lived in today.

“When we think of textiles, we always think of women in a domestic space, I wanted to go out of that space,” says Villarreal.

She grew up in Monterrey, Mexico, but has spent most of her adult life in the United States. With a background in marketing, she began pursuing art studies when moving to North Carolina with her husband, and ultimately earned a master’s focused on the analysis and management of contemporary art at the University of Barcelona. It centered her ideas on how painting – which she pursued at the time – and other media could inform one another.

These interests come through in “Walls of Memory,” a video installation, also part of “The Spaces We Inhabit” series, which shows Villarreal wiping paint from a wall she came across in Mexico. The hues come off in layers, showing both the paint’s poor quality and the wall’s earlier colors. “I work with memory in all my work,” she said.

From looking back to looking ahead, Felice Grodin’s “Yellowjacket_2524” at Dimensions Variable is a glimpse into the future in more than one way. Visitors first capture a QR code with a smartphone. Then, gigantic wing-like insect forms come into view on the phone but appear as if they were in the space itself.

It was made through the use of augmented reality technology (virtual reality is the kind that uses headsets). One can’t help but wonder: Is the future “Jurassic Park”-size bugs? Focus oscillates between the amazing technology and the idea of what is to come in our warming world. The work builds on Grodin’s earlier pieces, done, respectively at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and the Oolite Arts’ Media Salon, which also used technology to investigate how our world may transform with the changing climate.

Grodin’s practice includes drawing, where her architectural background is in evidence. Incorporating digital tools became a key focus when PAMM commissioned the artist for its technology initiative. The idea was to look at the world outside the human perspective. “I speculate with an open heart and displace the human a little bit,” she says.

Regarding her choice of the yellowjacket, she says, “I think there is a mythology of insects that cause fear.”

The queen, like others in the order hymenoptera, produces larvae, tended by infertile females while male drones create the nest. “The idea of an alternative society is interesting.” Grodin says she was inspired, in part by how close we live to the semi-tropical wild in South Florida. “It’s so much a part of our life down here.”

She knows the insects intrigue and, in some cases, repel people. It’s intentional. “The part that triggers people goes back to the vulnerability of our control,” says Grodin.

Meanwhile, at Opera Gallery Miami, Paul Amundarain has a series of paintings that looks at the past while interrogating the future. The medium is oil, acrylic and other pigments layered in a manner that harkens to Amundarain’s Venezuelan heritage.

We reached out to Amundarain for an interview but did not get a response by press time.

He says, however, in the press release statement for the show: “For me it is  crucial in my work to mix my identity with the new information that I constantly receive. The industrial aesthetics, advertising iconography and pop culture (present in Miami) are  references that are all present in my work.”

WHAT: “Becomes Us” at The Collective 62

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., by appointment, Monday through Sunday, through June 26, 2024

WHERE:  901 NW 62nd St,, Miami

INFORMATION: 305-804-8624 or thecollective62.com

WHAT: “Yellowjacket_2524—Felice Grodin” at Dimensions Variable

WHEN: Noon to 5 p.m., Thursday and Friday or by appointment, through July 10, 2024

WHERE: 101 NW 79th St., Miami

INFORMATION: 305-606-0058 and 305-607-5527 or dimensionsvariable.net

WHAT: Paul Amundarain,  “Entropy, Multiple Realities” at Opera Gallery Miami

WHEN: 11 a.m.  to 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday; noon to 6 p.m. Sunday, through May 27

WHERE: 151 NE 41st St., Suite 131, Miami,

INFORMATION: 305-868-3337 or operagallery.com

COST: Admission is free at all three galleries.

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com

From London, A New Event Champions Female Artists in Miami

Miami gallery stops will be part of the agenda during Women Artists’ Art Week coming to Miami beginning Saturday, June 1. Attendees will get a preview of Paula Turmina’s new show at the Andrew Reed Gallery. Shown is Paula Turmina, Sun Worshippers, triptych. (Photo courtesy of the artist and Andrew Reed Gallery)

It may come as a surprise, but Miami’s art scene is remarkably friendly towards women. At all levels of the art world in Miami, women have found positions of influence and success, from collectors like Mera Rubell and the late Rosa de la Cruz, curators like Bonnie Clearwater of NSU Art Museum and Maritza Lacayo of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and artists such as Jillian Mayer, Antonia Wright, Lynne Golob Gelfman, and countless others. Then again, maybe it’s not so surprising – Miami is the only major U.S. city founded by a woman, after all.

Now that Miami is considered an art world capital, people are also starting to take notice of how many of the city’s most celebrated artists and influential gallerists are women. That’s why Women Artists’ Art Week (WAAW), a London-based initiative that advocates for gender equality in the art world, decided to launch its inaugural U.S. edition here. WAAW Miami will launch on Saturday, June 1 and run until June 8, and according to the event’s director Alex Lane, it’s open to anyone, regardless of gender identity.

“We’d like it to be as diverse as possible in terms of age, gender, different socio-economic and professional backgrounds,” she says. “Although the initiative is focused on supporting women artists, we want both men and women to participate. This is really an event for everyone to celebrate locals.”

Lane, who moved to Miami from Colorado in 2019, says the city was chosen in particular for its open, supportive community, which includes many galleries and institutions run by women.

“We have a great gallery community here,” she says. “It’s relatively small, but very tight knit and supportive. And the shows that our galleries put on are very high quality and important. We (also) have a very active museum community with lots of programming and studio visits, and it’s very community-driven, which is great from a partnership perspective,” says Lane.

She also comments that there is a thriving collector base in Miami with international collectors who live or spend much time here.

“And I’ve found that the collector community is also very open with sharing their work. So all of these things, I think, make Miami a very institutional, sophisticated cultural art community, but there’s a warmth to the city and an approachability that’s unique here. And I think that personality is a great complement to WAAW’s mission.”

Much of WAAW’s programming, most of which is free to attend and open to the public, speaks to this inclusive attitude. Visitors will get to pick the brains of some of Miami’s most notable gallerists, most of whom just so happen to be women. The week kicks off on Saturday, June 1 with a gallery crawl focusing on female artists. In the morning, Nina Johnson will lead a walkthrough of Jasmine Little’s Greek-inspired ceramics at her eponymous gallery, leading to a preview of Paula Turmina’s new show at Andrew Reed in the afternoon.

Ceramics are also the name of the game for Mindy Solomon, who will discuss her gallery’s show of Jane Yang-D’Haene’s exploration of Korean moon jars. Solomon was the first gallerist WAAW approached to participate, according to Lane, and her guidance was crucial in determining the week’s format.

“She’s been a supporter of this initiative from day one, and she encouraged me to make this first year high-quality and a little ‘less is more,’” says Lane. “I think for our launch, it’s cool to have some female lead galleries as our anchors.”

Beyond the gallery sphere, other parts of Miami’s art scene will be explored. At the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami on Thursday, June 6, curator Amanda Morgan will lead a panel of local artists in discussing the Cuban diaspora and its impact on their work. The ICA is currently staging solo shows for three separate female artists, among them a major presentation of Cuban-American abstract painter Zilia Sánchez. WAAW will also stop by artist-run space Locust Projects on Tuesday, June 4 for a guided visit by Executive Director Lorie Mertes. The art center is currently showing Kerry Phillips’ new installation, “The patience of ordinary things”; Phillips presented new work at the Bass Museum last year.

WAAW attendees will also visit artists in the studio. On Monday, photographer Anastasia Samoylova, who will show work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art beginning in October of 2024, will open her Normandy Shores workspace. And a visit to the Fountainhead Residency, where three visiting artists are currently living and working, will close out the festivities on Saturday, June 8. A few private and invitation-only events are also planned, including a collector-artist social and a tea ceremony.

Despite the overwhelming presence of women in Miami’s art scene, progress still must be made on a global scale. According to Lane, only 30 percent of artworks sold on the primary market – that is, by galleries and dealers – are by women and female-identifying artists. Yet women make up 70 percent of art school students. Female artists often also face difficulties balancing work and raising children.

“There’s a lack of infrastructure and support for female artists to continue working and practicing, as well as starting a family,” she says. “I think there’s a lot of room for improvement in the ecosystem, and with WAAW, we’re really trying to improve this from a grassroots level.”

WHAT: Women Artists’ Art Week Miami

 WHEN: Saturday, June 1 through Saturday, June 8

 WHERE: Multiple locations throughout Miami

 COST: Free

 INFORMATION: instagram.com/waawworld and eventbrite.com/cc/waaw-miami-2024-3335259.

 ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com

A Miami Collector’s Fascination With Cigar Cutters Sends ‘Smoke Signals’ At Wolfsonian-FIU

The Wolfsonian-FIU’s “Beauty Bar” cabinet is a perfect showcase for some of the more than 360 cigar cutters given to the Wolfsonian-FIU by Miami collector Richard Kronenberg. An exhibition, curated by Lea Nickless, titled “Smoke Signals: Cigar Cutters and Masculine Values” is at the Miami Beach museum through Sunday, Sept. 29. (Photo courtesy of the Wolfsonian-FIU)

Sometimes, as the immortal Freud reportedly said, a cigar is just a cigar. Yet the sentiment isn’t true for cigar cutters, which, as revealed in the Wolfsonian exhibit “Smoke Signals: Cigar Cutters and Masculine Values” are a kaleidoscope into the West’s fin de siècle and early 20th century cultures.

Ranging from strictly utilitarian to ornate works of art, the cutters are from the more than 360 snippers donated to the Wolfsonian by Miami collector Richard Kronenberg. He and his wife, Margaret, spent decades searching out the objects. Taken together, these cutters evoke a time when men, from working stiffs to uptown swells, enjoyed a stogie at the bar, at work, at social clubs and during leisure time. They tell of an industrializing society where men gathered at private clubs, leagues, associations and union halls, while high society with its operas, yachting, balls and hunts had its own cultural markers.

The proliferation of these cutters – which smokers use to snip off the cigar’s end for greater draw –  came about after public health issues arose, explained Lea Nickless, the Wolfsonian curator who created the exhibition. As smoking’s popularity grew, tobacco shops, general stores and saloons offered communal cutters. However, officials discovered the cutters were transmitting disease because smokers would lick the cigar’s end before using the device.

“The cutter became a vector,” says Nickless. In 1913, officials issued a health warning about the communal cutters, and notes Nickless, the explosion of personal cutters followed. “That was the golden age of cigars,” she says. “Ninety percent of men smoked cigars to pass the time and socialize.”

Arrayed in an intimate room on the Wolfsonian’s first floor, visitors can see the cutters displayed in ways that reveal function, craftsmanship and, in some cases, pure fantasy.  “Looking at these objects it’s like getting a snapshot of the world at that moment,” says Nickless.

For example, one case shows a group of working-dog cutters (collies, wolfhounds and retrievers). There are cutters that look like birds of prey. One is a boar tusk. There are firearm-formed cutters. In another cabinet elephant cutters caper. There are bears and ducks and a profusion of pigs. Meanwhile, others are associated with professions or trades symbolized by water valves, anvils, and railroad signals. Some are designed to boost brands. It’s not always obvious how every cutter functions, and sussing out their inner workings is part of the show’s fun.

That mechanical aspect was in part what fascinated Kronenberg, who with Margaret had long enjoyed scouting antiques. One day, he asked a store clerk about the usage of an intriguing object. It became the first in his cigar cutter collection. For years the couple sleuthed out cutters at shows and shops, meeting people from all walks of life. Later, they scoured the internet.

“For the most part they are intricate and things of beauty, and, not quite an art form but mechanically brilliant,” says Kronenberg, noting that the aesthetics of each piece is the first attraction. After 60 years of collecting, the couple had cigar cutters everywhere, “in every drawer and shelf and it was time to let it go.”

The Wolfsonian, with its focus on Modernist arts and design was a perfect fit, he says, noting how the museum’s collection illustrates many historical narratives. And Kronenberg says he’s pleased to share the objects with others. “Most have no idea what they are.”

Women in the Cigar World

Entwined with the somewhat picture-book view of earlier times are troubling legacies when it comes to women. One display reveals the women-related cutters; one is a garter-topped leg. A prone women conceals the cutter between her legs (Freud!).

One vitrine holds The Nautch Girl, a watch-fob cutter linked to a comic opera of the same name, itself based on professional Hindu dancers. Under British rule in India, according to Nickless’ research, their ceremonial role was degraded into prostitution.

“A number of cigar cutters express the disrespect . . . toward women that went hand-in-hand with male-only smoking rooms,” Nickless writes in the exhibition catalog. “Several cutters portray women sitting on a chamber pot or naked on a toilet in an outhouse.”

WHAT: “Smoke Signals: Cigar Cutters and Masculine Values”

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday, open until 9 p.m. Friday. Through Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024

WHERE: The Wolfsonian-FIU, 1001 Washington Ave., Miami Beach

COST: Admission is free for museum members, Florida residents, visitors with disabilities and their accompanying caregiver, children under 6, students, faculty and staff of the State University System of Florida; otherwise $12 for adults $8 for seniors, students with ID and visitors ages 6 to 18. Free on Fridays 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. each week.

RELATED EVENT: On Thursday, May 16, the museum will host a talk titled “From Seed to Smoke: Uncovering Women’s Roles in the Cigar Industry,” featuring sisters Yvette and Yvonne Rodriguez, founders of Tres Lindas Cubanas Cigars, about their experience in the industry, and moderated by museum educator Susana Perez. The free event begins at 6:15 with a meet and greet with the curator, then the talk at 7 p.m.

INFORMATION: 305-531-1001 and wolfsonian.org

 ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com

de la Cruz Legacy Celebrated in Auctions, Exhibitions

José Bedia’s “Lucero viene alumbrando,” 1992, gift of Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, is featured in“To Be As A Cloud: Recent Acquisitions”  at NSU Art Museum, 1 East Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale. (Photo courtesy of NSU Art Museum)

A sadness hung in the air at the de la Cruz Collection’s final day on April 12. It had been mere weeks since the death on Sunday, Feb. 25, of its primary patron, Rosa de la Cruz, who supported generations of Miami artists and students.  

 The Design District building and art are now under the steerage of Christie’s, which plans to auction off the influential collector’s trove of art. The collection is one of such distinguished provenance and exceptional value that the auction house, one of the top two globally alongside Sotheby’s, is releasing the collection over multiple sales so as not to shock the art market – the first one on Tuesday, May 14 is even titled the Rosa de la Cruz Collection Evening Sale.  

 “We’re calling it the ‘Year of Rosa,’” says Jessica Katz, director of Christie’s Miami office, during our visit. 

 Indeed, the introduction of the de la Cruz collection to the art market is expected to set new auction records for certain artists, according to Julian Ehrlich, a contemporary art specialist with Christie’s. In particular, he notes Ana Mendieta and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, both of whom died young and left a limited amount of work behind. The de la Cruzes, Rosa along with her husband, Carlos, who made their money running Coca-Cola bottling plants in Puerto Rico, were major collectors of both artists, and of Cuban contemporary artists in general, and the works they collected by these artists are some of their best.  

 “Very few major works by these artists have ever come to market,” says Ehrlich. “With Felix Gonzalez-Torres, our low estimate on “Untitled (America #3)” (a string of lights created by the artist in 1993) is already in excess of the public auction record. So there are just these moments that will automatically break records.”  

A select group of visitors, some potential buyers, had been invited to view the works one last time before the sales begin in New York. Loss prevention officers in black suits hovered around the artworks that had been rehung and restaged for the occasion on the first floor. These pivotal pieces by Mendieta, Gonzalez-Torres, Rufino Tamayo, Peter Doig, Hernan Bas, and other big names in contemporary art may be swept up by foreign and out-of-town buyers and never be seen again in Miami.

But thankfully, some of the de la Cruz’s holdings will remain in South Florida – and they’re some of the best. At the NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, a new exhibition is paying tribute to Rosa’s legacy by highlighting her longstanding relationship with the institution, which dates back to 1992 according to director Bonnie Clearwater.  

 “They were very generous with donations of works in their collection when I was a director of MoCA (North Miami), and when I came to Fort Lauderdale, they continued their support,” says Clearwater. “They’ve given 63 works to the museum since 2019, and the most recent were given a few months ago – ten very personal works to them, early major works by José Bedia.”  

 These pieces by the Cuban-American artist form the centerpiece of “To Be As A Cloud,” a show featuring a litany of recent acquisitions by the museum, some purchased as recently as last year. There’s a painting by Jared McGriff that gives the show its name, as well as a ceramic work by Theaster Gates. A photograph of a slave shack on a preserved Louisiana plantation by Dawoud Bey is hung in conversation with a pair of small canvases by Reginald O’Neal, whose work alludes to the modern oppression of the prison industrial complex. There’s also work from last year’s group of solo shows “Future Past Perfect,” including a terracotta sculpture by Joel Gaitan and a monumental tropical-fauvist-surrealist painting by Alejandro Piñeiro Bello.  

 But the de la Cruz-donated works by Bedia, a Palo Monte priest whose artworks reflect his fascination with indigenous spiritual practices are the real highlight. There’s a group of eight drawings on amate paper, each one big enough to take up an entire wall, titled the “Ogun series.” The title alludes to Ogun, the Yoruba orisha (deity) of iron and war still worshiped by some Afro-Caribbean sects like Cuban Santería and Haitian Vodou. In Bedia’s prints, the head of Ogun becomes shaped into trains and ships, guns and helicopters, referencing the way in which Yoruba-descended slaves in Cuba were forced to work in heavy industry, blacksmithing and building the country’s railways.  

 In another work, “Lucero viene alumbrando” (“Star Comes Shining”), Bedia depicts Nkuyo Nfinda, a trickster god of the Congo encountered while traveling, in the center of a circular canvas. Light radiates out from the jackalope-like being’s head, and he holds a toy boat in his hands. Four winds blow from the cardinal directions at the painting’s borders. Bedia completed the painting in 1992, as migrants from Cuba and Haiti took to the seas in makeshift craft to escape deprivation at home. In a sense, Nkuyo Nfinda represents the fate that these travelers tempted when they took to the waters of the Caribbean in search of a better life in America, and specifically Miami.  

 Clearwater says she had a difficult time convincing the couple to part with these works, which hung in their home on Key Biscayne. As fellow immigrants from Cuba, they shared with the artist a common heritage that must have resonated deeply.  

 “(These) are the works they chose to live with,” says Clearwater. “And I don’t know if you’re aware, but of all the artists whose works they’ve collected, they had commissioned Bedia to engrave their final resting place.”  

 WHAT: “To Be As A Cloud: Recent Acquisitions”  

 WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; noon  to 5 p.m. Sunday; closed Monday. Thorough July 28.

 WHERE: NSU Art Museum, 1 East Las Olas Blvd., Fort Lauderdale 

 COST: $16 for adults; $10 for seniors; $8 for military, $5 for students 13-17 and non-NSU college students with valid ID; free for members, NSU students, faculty, and staff, and children 12 and under; free for all on the first Thursday of every month.  

 INFORMATION: 954-525-5000 and nsuartmuseum.org 

 ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com

Storytellers Bring Hope and Resilience to Little Haiti Book Festival

The 2024 Little Haiti Book Festival on Sunday, May 5 at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex features dance and music performances, traditional Haitian games, and storytelling to celebrate the rich culture and literary talent of Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. (Photo courtesy of Miami Dade College/ Miami Book Fair)

It was just after the 2010 Haitian earthquake and Ketsia Theodore-Pharel was feeling helpless.

“I was devastated,” says the Miami-based author. “I wanted to go help Haiti.”

Everyone around her had a clearly defined role, but it seemed a bit more elusive for her.

“I have cousins who were nurses, they went to help. I have friends who were doctors who went to help, and I even had a friend who is in social public policy who was helpful. And I felt like as a writer and educator what can I do?”

Eventually she realized that as a storyteller her strength lies in capturing the imagination of those around her.

With tales inspired by her Haitian grandmother she can, if but for a moment, whisk a captive audience to a place far away from a turbulent present or a painful past. Therein lies her magic.

“I feel like I am an ambassador, a cultural ambassador of Haiti. I can’t nurse the sick. I can’t operate on the injured. I don’t have money to feed people, but I can feed minds. I can feed souls and I can feed attitudes with my stories. And that’s what I do.”

Theodore-Pharel will tap into her gift and join forces with other storytellers at the 10th annual Little Haiti Book Festival.

In partnership with the Miami Book Fair and Soyeste Koukouy, the free festival will be held on Sunday, May 5 at the Little Haiti Cultural Center and will cater to lovers of Haitian literature, food and culture.

“It’s a family-oriented event,” says M.J. Fievre, the festival’s program director. “It is an opportunity to reconnect with all those aspects that are important in life: family and community.”

With music by Inez Barlatier and DJNicky Mixx, attendees can participate in a range of activities including a traditional Haitian dance workshop, yoga sessions, a HistoryMiami Story booth, panel discussions, art projects, and even a comedy show.

The theme for this year’s festival is Ansanm or Together and through their program, organizers are seeking a common ground between Haitian culture and the larger community in Miami.

“Everything is universal,” says Fievre. “Whether you’re taking a yoga and meditation class, whether you’re learning how to play dominoes, or whether you’re learning to draw. Whether you go to the children’s room for storytelling, you will find an activity that suits your interests and your language.”

And of course, there will be books. Lots of them.

“We always have books in all languages,” adds Fievre.  “In the Marketplace, you will find a book that is of interest to you in a language that you can speak.”

Organizers have also made sure to address potential language barriers in other areas. Though a planned panel discussion about Haiti in the media at 2 p.m. will be conducted largely in Haitian Creole and another panel addressing artificial intelligence at noon will be held in English, interpreters will be on hand. (The panels will be recorded and then streamed at noon and 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 19 on Miami Book Fair’s Facebook page and at miamibookfaironline.com.)

Art is a major component of the festival, too, and one project in particular, led by Haitian artist Asser Saint-Val, will be used to engage children at the event. Saint-Val has an ongoing relationship with the festival through a partnership with the Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College.

“For the past few years we’ve actually been working with the same artist because the kids keep falling in love with him,” says Fievre.  “Every year he comes up with a curriculum where he tries to connect the art that is being created with either the children’s books that are featured in the festival or some aspects of Haitian culture that people care about.”

Saint-Val’s current project will be to build ti kays, or little houses, in a tribute to the Little Haiti Cultural Complex. Fievre said the complex is particularly important since it has withstood efforts of gentrification in the area.

“It’s a symbol of resistance, for the community, because if you know the history of Little Haiti, they’ve been trying to get rid of Haitians for the longest time and that center has been how we continue to be anchored to the community. And for the 10th anniversary we wanted to come up with an idea that honored our Haitian roots and honored this center so ti kay will be reminiscent of the architecture of the center,” says Fievre, adding that the little houses participants build they can take home.

Festival organizers say that the event serves a dual purpose — an opportunity to present positive aspects of their culture especially given the political climate in Haiti.

“It’s community engagement,” says  Weiselande “Yanui” César, executive founding director of Tradisyon Lakou Lakay, which launched in 2004 and whose mission it is to leverage Haitian performance art. César is also a master storyteller at this year’s event.

“It’s community building. “It’s just supporting each other, it’s supporting the arts and it is needed more so now. it’s more important to hold space and to share  in the light and the positivity of our culture.”

Fievre would like to see a more even-handed approach when it comes to Haiti and believes that the festival will help to provide a fuller picture when it comes to her native homeland.

“Nobody’s denying that terrible things are happening in Haiti,” says Fievre. “We hear about it. Many of us have witnessed it firsthand. But where is the balance? Where is the portrayal of all the beauty that there is in Haiti.  To begin with, Port-au-Prince is not Haiti. The country is not a city and there’s a lot of beauty outside of Port-au-Prince and even in areas of Port-au-Prince so where is the focus on that?” She continues: “So we have events like this one because we want people to see yes, we understand that terrible things are happening. But let’s not forget to do wonderful things that made us the resilient people that we are today.”

Theodore-Pharel agrees.

“Haiti is not hopeless. Haiti is experiencing birth pain and is about to give birth to the greatest intellectual, social, physical, cultural and geographical renewal that the world will see.”

César hopes that those who support Haiti and its people will find a way to connect through the Little Haiti Book Festival.

“It’s the culture that holds us together. That’s our superpower. So everyone needs to come out and support us and, in that way, you will get the full flavor of Haitian culture.”

WHAT:  Little Haiti Book Festival.

WHEN:  11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday, May 5. 

WHERE:  Little Haiti Cultural Complex, 212 NE 59th Terrace, Miami

COST: Free

INFORMATION: 305-237-7258 and complete schedule at miamibookfair.com/littlehaiti.

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com.

MOCA Installation Informed By Black Enslavement and Miami Road To Freedom

Visitors connect with sounds and feelings enslaved people may have experienced in “Bound//Unbound,” an outdoor installation by local artist Alexandra Fields O’Neale at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami through June 2. (Photo courtesy of Daniel Bock)

The great ocean that carried enslaved Africans to the Western hemisphere’s sugar and cotton plantations, also ferried some to freedom. In what was termed the Saltwater Underground Railroad, those in bondage boarded boats and sailed from Florida’s coast, headed east to the Bahamas and liberation.

That story captivated local artist Alexandra Fields O’Neale, and forms the background of her installation “Bound//Unbound” in the “Welcome to Paradise” series now in the courtyard space through Sunday, June 2 at Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami.

In the outdoor area, visitors walk through two contrasting open-air enclosures: one associated with slavery, the other, with the journey to freedom. Ocean soundscapes bathe the visitor, suggesting what long-ago travelers may have experienced. The room-like spaces, bounded by woven and hanging ropes and floored with sand – reference the beaches the sojourners may have encountered when reaching the Bahamas.

O’Neale, born and raised in Miami, has a wide-ranging practice, which includes video and performance, along with fiber arts. She also investigates the sometimes fraught relationship that Black women experience with their hair; what is acceptable, what is not and how hair relates to identity. She likes exploring liminal spaces that evoke feelings and emotions perhaps not as easily accessible in traditional art forms.

Living in a world that is visually saturated – from magazines and billboards to the deluge of digital images from cell phones and computers – it could be asked whether appealing to senses other than the purely visual is a pathway to connection even more impactful than are paintings and photos.

O’Neale said that for this type of work, involving historical components, the use of sound is crucial, evoking what those enslaved and on their way to the colonies would have heard: the splash of bodies thrown overboard, perhaps the slap of the waves against the cargo hold of the boat, where most were held, and the sound of the surf whether coming or going from land. “Their spirits still live in the water, and I’m trying to honor that,” she says. The sound components came first, and shaped the other aspects of the installation, including the sand and ropes, with, eventually, the whole emerging as a narrative.

“Growing up in Miami, I wasn’t aware of this history,” says O’Neale, referring to the Saltwater Underground Railroad, adding that she came across it in the course of research. “I was shocked that Florida and Miami had such a big impact on freedom for a lot of enslaved people.”

Through the mid-1800s, and especially during the last 30 years before emancipation, about 6,000 enslaved people made it to the Bahamas by boat. Britain, which ruled the islands, outlawed slavery by the 1830s, making it an attractive destination for those fleeing bondage from not only Florida, but Georgia and other East Coast states. But unlike the journeys to northern states and Canada, the trips across the sea have garnered much less attention, though that is beginning to change.

It was, in part, this less-explored aspect of Florida’s Black history that drew MOCA Curator Adeze Wilford to the work of O’Neale, as well as to that of Germane Barnes, whose installation, “Shotgun House,” will be installed in June in the Paradise courtyard.

It is the second “Welcome to Paradise” iteration curated by Wilford, who commissioned both O’Neale and Barnes to create work specifically for the courtyard space. Wilford moved to Miami from New York to take the MOCA job. Since arriving about two years ago, she has been researching the South Florida art scene and visiting area artist studios. During those investigations she was struck by the area’s wealth of Black American history and determined to bring it to a wider audience.

“There are intriguing parts of Miami that go beyond the typical ideas people have of South Florida,” says Wilford. She said she knew about the Saltwater Railroad, but didn’t realize the depth and drama of the story. Likewise, the second installation, Barnes’ “Shotgun House,” which comes after O’Neale’s work, focuses on a less-known aspect of Black history in Miami. Barnes will install a created version of the iconic structure, which is intimately tied up with Black home ownership. Barnes is both artist and architect and is an assistant professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture.

“There is this history of Black American life, that is part of this city and area, and is sometimes overlooked,” says Wilford, adding that a lot of conversation in Miami centers around diaspora. “I was definitely interested in the stories of the Black American experience.” And while those stories are connected to diaspora, she says, they are also uniquely their own.

Meanwhile, O’Neale hopes her work touches a cord in those who visit. “I think people shy away from subjects like this,” she explains, noting that the Saltwater Underground Railroad is a “reflection on the history of America, making it more accessible and tangible.”

WHAT: “Bound//Unbound””

WHEN: Through Sunday, June 2

WHERE: Paradise Courtyard, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, 770 NE 125th St., North Miami

COST:  Free

 INFORMATION: 305-893-6211 or www.mocanomi.org

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music, and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com.