Art of Black Miami showcases neighborhoods at this year’s art week
Written By Sergy Odiduro December 2, 2022 at 9:01 AM
Philippe Dodard, Dimensional Flow, Art of Transformation exhibit, Opa-locka. (Photo courtesy of Art of Transformation and the artist)
While Art of Black Miami is a year-round showcase of visual arts and artists, it’s become an integral part of Miami Art Week.
Launched in 2014 by the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau (GMCVB) as an ongoing platform for local artists, Art of Black Miami’s art week offerings are plentiful and varied.
“We’re excited because there are a lot of things happening in this cultural space,” says Connie Kinnard, the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau’s Senior Vice President, Multicultural Tourism & Development Department. “We powered this marketing program that highlights our art and . . . particularly those artists within the Black Diaspora.”
Kinnard pointed out that there are many sites to visit, including those that aren’t necessarily known for being an art destination.
“We want to encourage people that are coming in to visit to also get out and experience all of our neighborhoods,” said Kinnard. “Our destination is culturally diverse and we know that Black artists in the diaspora are a big part of Miami Dade. We want visitors to be aware of all of the talent that we have in our communities.”
Here’s a sample of some of the upcoming events and the neighborhoods spotlighted.
LIBERTY CITY
“Le Art Noir, Diversity in Color” will be hosting an evening of art, fashion and entertainment on Thursday, Dec. 1 at the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center.
“This is our second year and we are coming in bigger and better,” says spokesperson Randi B. Berger. “We have extended the amount of diverse artists that we have this year. We’ve also gone into a lot more of 3D and digital NFTs.”
The all-encompassing event will expand beyond traditional art mediums.
“We will be having cutting-edge fashion and a celebration of music. We’re doing a lot of pop culture and we’re doing issues that are very poignant. In today’s society, we’re giving a voice to those that typically could not be heard.”
WHAT: “Le Art Noir, Diversity in Color”
WHERE: African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, 6161 NW 22nd Ave.
Hampton Art Lovers is hosting The Point Comfort Art Fair + Show at the Historic Ward Rooming House and Gardens in Overtown. Their goal is to not only promote local art, but to also provide a meeting space for conversation and music.
“We have a multi-dimensional fair where we have something called our Indaba Lounge Series which is a series of our talks that we produce. We also have our nighttime events,” says Chris Norwood, co-founder of Hampton Art Lovers.
He hopes that visitors will stop by and see what’s in store.
“If you want to see black art, come to a historic black community,” said Norwood. “We are providing a place where African-Americans and anybody can come and experience black culture in a way that is digestible during the largest cultural event in North America.
Norwood said that their event is a great way to purchase authentic African-American art even if you’re on a tight budget.
“We sell art at every price point,” he says. “Everybody can leave there with something if they want. And that’s very important to us. ”
WHAT: The Point Comfort Art Fair + Show
WHEN: Various events through Sunday Dec. 4
WHERE: Historic Ward Rooming House, 249 N.W. 9th St.
The “Art of Transformation” is a two-block event in Opa-locka featuring a dance performance, film screening, panel discussion and three art exhibits.
Tumelo Mosaka said that the event stems from continuously engaging artists and the community.
Phillip Thomas, “High Sis in the Garden of Heathen,” 2017, 58 x 70, Mixed Media on Fabric. (Photo courtesy of Art of Transformation and the artist)
“I’ve been doing an exhibition in Opa-locka almost every other year, looking at artists from the continent and the diaspora and bringing them here to create first-class exhibitions. And now this is a larger manifestation of the interventions we’ve been doing.”
The individual shows highlight different aspects of the African diaspora.
Mosaka, who is overseeing all of the exhibits, is also the curator for “This Here Place: Africa and the Global Diaspora.” which features six international artists from the Opa-locka Development Corporation collection.
The remaining two exhibits will be held nearby.
“We invited an organization that has worked with Haitian artists to bring their conversation into the mix in terms of thinking about how the Caribbean diaspora engages in the emotions about identity and representation,” said Mosaka. “They will be presenting an exhibition that’s trying to trace the artistic language of Haitian artists who have lived both in Haiti and in the diaspora in terms of thinking about what has been the vocabulary and the language of thinking about representation by Haitian artists. That exhibition is called “A Beautiful Human Love.”
“The other one called “AfriKin Art 2022: The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.” is an exhibition that is looking primarily at emerging artists out of the diaspora and thinking about this moment of recognition, this moment of thinking about what the future holds: Have we really arrived or are we still struggling?
“It’s a very interesting conversation that each exhibition brings and so we hope to continue bringing exciting things and putting Opa-locka on the map in terms of really offering the best that there is to offer with what we’ve got.”
WHAT: The Art of Transformation
WHEN: Various Events Through Sunday Dec. 4
WHERE: Ali Baba Ave., between Opa-locka Blvd. and Aladdin St.
SHENEQUA, Bronze Wumman. (Photo courtesy of Art of Transformation and the artist)
LITTLE HAVANA
Bring the family out to a day of festivities at the 10th Annual Umbrellas of Little Havana Art Festival. Held in partnership with the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind, the event will feature a variety of art displays along with an impressive array of hand-painted patio umbrellas by local artists. This year visitors will have the opportunity to view 25 new designs.
WHAT: 10th Annual Umbrellas of Little Havana Art Festival
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
Artists in Residence in Everglades summit contemplates art, diversity and the environment
Written By Sean Erwin November 29, 2022 at 3:51 PM
“Passages,” an immersive installation and soundscape, was created by Cornelius Tulloch and features the 2022 artists in residents in Everglades recipients. (Photo courtesy of AIRIE)
Amanda Williams uses color and her training in architecture to investigate issues related to race and the urban environment.
For her 2016 “Colo(red) Theory” series, the MacArthur Fellow and Chicago-based visual and installation artist painted eight buildings slated for demolition in the South Side of Chicago with colors named like Ultrasheen (hot blue tone), Newport 100s (soft blue tone), Crown Royal Bag (velvety purple) and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos (bright red-orange).
Amanda Williams, artist and architect, 2022 MacArthur Fellow, is one of the featured speakers at AIRIE’s Art and Environment Summit. (Photo courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation)
Williams crafted colors that resonated with the Black community and the palette of the neighborhoods she grew up in.
When asked in 2020 to participate on the National Advisory Council for AIRIE (Artists in Residence in Everglades) to reimagine the 21-year-old, non-profit Everglades residency program, Williams saw an opportunity in South Florida’s urban environments and the river of grass to increase diversity among the artists who are involved in AIRIE’S month-long immersions.
“AIRIE is finding new ways to reconceive the natural,” says Williams. “There is an ability to help people understand that you can’t stay stuck in the injustice, and this is especially hard for communities where that injustice is barely being acknowledged at all.”
She will be a key speaker during the Friday, Dec. 2 AIRIE Art and Environment Summit alongside Adam Ganuza, the chief of staff for the president’s office at the Knight Foundation, Alexander Cunningham Cameron, Cooper Hewitt curator and Hintz Secretarial Scholar, Tatiana Mouarbes of the Open Society Foundation, and Reverend Houston Cypress representing the Love the Everglades Movement.
Williams investigates the idea of land ownership and the question of who gets to own what and why. “Where’s the delineation of who owns this, and how is this based on those kinds of documents and policies which have had physical outcomes on the environment?” questions Williams.
Cornelius Tulloch, right, directs filmmaker Alexa Caravia and AIRIE Fellow Kunya Rowley in the creation of a piece for “Passages.” In the immersive installation, Rowley performs a song he wrote that was inspired by his time as an AIRIE resident artist in the Everglades. (Photo courtesy of Meg Ojala)
When asked what role artists can play in defending environments such as the Everglades threatened by rising sea levels and global warming, Williams answers: “Yes, it (the Everglades) is probably going to go away, but how do we own the effort of making work that’s joyful right now and how does this empower us to act?”
She references Cornelius Tulloch, a Miami-based artist and 2022 AIRIE Fellow.
“For instance, Cornelius did this wonderful work of lighting at night that conveys the notion of the African Diaspora and people moving through this landscape (the Everglades). It’s beautiful to look at but what it speaks to is extremely powerful,” says Williams referring to Tulloch’s immersive installation “Passages,” which forms the artistic focal point of the summit.
Tulloch, who grew up in South Florida, had only visited the Everglades once during a high school trip. The AIRIE residency program allowed him to get to know the park and its rich history in a deeper way, he says.
The artist was especially inspired by the history of the Florida Highwaymen – a group of 26 mostly self-taught African-American painters who traveled the 95 corridor of Florida’s east coast during the Jim Crow period making a living from selling their paintings.
Artist Cornelius Tulloch. (Photo courtesy of Gwen Tulloch)
“These are hidden histories that we don’t think about all the time,” says Tulloch, “and these were artists who were not just thinking about ecology, but there is a lot of intersection of their narratives within the South Florida environment and a consciousness of the environment.”
Drawing inspiration from his Jamaican and African-American heritage, Tulloch’s work expresses how bodies exist between cultures, borders, and characteristics to create spatial impact.
His work has been exhibited widely including at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Miami Pulse Art Fair, and the Museo Nazionale Delle Arti Del XXI Secolo in Rome. In 2016, Tulloch was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts and, in 2020, the artist received the Ellies Creator Award from Oolite Arts. And recently was named an Emerging Visionary Grantee by Instagram and the Brooklyn Museum as part of its 2022 BlackVisionaries program.
Tulloch co-created “Passages” with the eight other 2022 AIRIE Fellows, who are artists working in a diverse array of mediums from sound to song and poetry, including Arsimmer McCoy, Francisco Masó, Kunya Rowley, M. Carmen Lane, Ania Freer, Lola Flash, Justin Matousek, and Alexa Caravia. According to ARIE, 225 applications were submitted for the nine Fellows spots for 2022. AIRIE’s selected fellows, as is the norm, received a $4,000 grant for a one-month residency in Everglades National Park and were provided housing and a stipend for the length of the residency.
Evette Alexander, AIRIE executive director, Cornelius Tulloch, artist and AIRIE creative director, and Tracey Robertson Carter, co-chair of the board, in Everglades National Park. (Photo courtesy of AIRIE)
The summit represents AIRIE’s largest event to date and is its first Art and the Environment Summit. “This is an opportunity to build a more inclusive community around the issue of environmental justice to convene leaders and highlight the stories and interpretations that artists like Cornelius are making with the Everglades,” according to Evette Alexander, AIRIE’s executive director.
Since 2021, almost 200 creatives from artists to writers to curators have been selected for AIRIE residencies. “We curate our residency experience,” explains Alexander. “Artists go out with scientists, hydrologists and (experience) controlled burns, kayaking, slough slogs (wet hiking through the cypress domes). We really do immerse our artists in the landscape and their stores,” says Alexander.
WHAT: AIRIE (Artist in Residence in Everglades) Art Installation and Summit
WHERE: The Carter Project, 3333 NW 6th Ave., Miami
WHEN: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Friday, Dec. 2. The art installation,“Passages,” is on view to the public from noon to 4 p.m. at the Carter Project through Sunday, Dec. 4.
COST: The event and installation are free. A separate RSVP and $10 donation is required for the 12:30 p.m. lunch.
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
12 artists, 12 Miami Beach hotels for 3rd and largest edition of ‘No Vacancy, Miami Beach’
Written By Michelle F. Solomon November 18, 2022 at 9:58 AM
“Carcass,” Beatriz Chachamovits, hand-built ceramic installation, Esme Miami Beach, 1438 Washington Ave., is part of the third edition of “No Vacancy, Miami Beach,” on public display through Thursday, Dec. 8. (Photo courtesy of City of Miami Beach and the artist)
Known as some of the most art-centric hotels in the country and, in fact, the world, visitors and locals to Miami Beach will discover that, at any given time of the year, the hotels of Miami Beach excel in displays of original works of art.
Going another step further in their status as destinations for art, the City of Miami Beach and the Miami Beach Visitor and Convention Center (MBVCA) are, for the third year, partnering with hotels for “No Vacancy, Miami Beach,” a collection of site-specific works by 12 local artists paired with 12 of the most storied hotels on Miami Beach.
“Angle of Vanishing Stability (AVS), Justin Long, site-specific installation, The International Inn on the Bay, 2301 Normandy Drive. (Photo courtesy of City of Miami Beach and the artist)
The third edition of “No Vacancy, Miami Beach,” on view from Thursday, Nov. 17 through Thursday, Dec. 8, is the largest since the juried art competition’s first edition in 2020, according to the organizers from the City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places Committee, Cultural Arts Council (CAC) and MBVCA.
“It’s an opportunity for the hotels,” says Deborah Plutzik-Briggs, vice president, arts at The Betsy Hotel, South Beach, (1400 Ocean Drive). The hotel was paired with Hollywood, Fla., artist Sri Prabha for the installation “Cosmic Occupancy,” which will have a selection of three separate video projections on The Betsy’s Orb.
According to the artist, video projections on and around The Orb are meant to create a dynamic and contemplative space to reflect upon an individual’s place in the universe. The Orb, a spectacle in itself, is a work of public art, connecting the Betsy Hotel and the Carlton Hotel across an alleyway (14th Place and Ocean Court).
“The projections onto The Orb and into the alley illuminate the entire outdoor space. It enables The Betsy to bring the arts outside and invites the community to come inside to see what else is going on,” says Briggs.
“Cosmic Occupancy,” Sri Praba, video projects at the Betsy Hotel, 1400 Ocean Drive. (Photo courtesy of City of Miami Beach and the artist)
Artists were selected from a call for submission and selected by representatives from the City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places Committee, Cultural Arts Council (CAC) and the MBVCA. Artists received $10,000 to facilitate the creation of the artwork and are paired with the hotel location which would show the work.
The works on view also give the public a chance to voice their opinion and vote for their favorite. The Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau is awarding $10,000 to one of the artists for its Public Prize and anyone can cast their vote beginning Nov. 17 at mbartsandculture.org.
An additional $25,000 Juried Prize will be awarded to a “No Vacancy, Miami Beach” artist and selected by a jury of local art professionals. Winners will be announced on Dec. 8, 2022.
“This is our third go around with “No Vacancy” and what’s been great is the (selection committee’s) ability to match us with artists that understand who we are — not every artist fits in every hotel space. Every hotel is different just like every artist is different. Hotels have a soul, and they have an aesthetic and sensibility that I believe can amplify an artist’s work,” says Briggs.
At the Faena Hotel Miami Beach (3201 Collins Ave.), the work is “Patria y Vida” by Antonia Wright and Ruben Millares, a large light sculpture using 18 metal barricades with LED lights bound together and arranged in a chaotic formation. The artists describe the site-specific installation as a celebration of people’s right to peacefully protest. The barricades are part of a series by the pair where they ponder the familiar barricade focusing on it as a symbol of resistance.
“Patria y Vida,” Antonia Wright and Ruben Millares, large-scale light sculpture, Faena Hotel Miami Beach, 3201 Collins Ave. (Photo courtesy of City of Miami Beach and the artist)
“For us within “No Vacancy,” it is important to collaborate with the City of Miami Beach. They are doing beautiful programs and supporting artists, which is very much in line with what the mission of Faena Art is,” says Nicole Comotti, executive director of Faena Art. Comotti comments on how vital it is that work by local artists be seen and funded in programs such as “No Vacancy, Miami Beach” especially during Miami Art Week.
Comotti says “No Vacancy, Miami Beach” brings a “tone of unexpectedness and access” to visitors.
“Rather than just renting a hotel room, you’re learning about and being exposed to artists in the local community, and you’re being given access to something that you wouldn’t necessarily have,” says Comotti. “The hotel is not only a place for you to come and stay, but is a place for you to enjoy, to educate yourself in art and culture and entertainment. It is also a place that supports the community.”
See the works of art created by local artists at these hotels, free and open to the public.
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
Costa Rican’s monumental sculptural works transform downtown Miami park into outdoor museum
Written By Ana Maria Carrano October 21, 2022 at 2:17 PM
The 2,204-pound bronze sculpture “Recuerdo Profundo” by Costa Rican artist Jorge Jiménez Deredia is one of 14 works in “A Bridge of Light” in Miami’s Maurice A. Ferré Park through March 23, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Ana Maria Carrano)
When Hurricane Ian was approaching the state of Florida near the end of September 2022, the monumental works of Costa Rican sculptor Jorge Jiménez Deredia were already in Miami. They were in the midst of installation at the Maurice A. Ferré Park for the outdoor exhibition “A Bridge of Light.”
Not knowing if Miami would incur any wrath from Ian, the monumental-sized sculptures needed to be protected. Despite the size and weight, such as the “Egg-genesis” (4,188 pounds and 20 feet long), the pieces needed to be secured with large cargo straps to prevent any monumental fall.
Ian missed Miami and the 14 sculptures remained safe, making their debut on Oct. 12, where they will be on display at the waterfront until March 31, 2023.
Jorge Jiménez Deredia, “Refugio,” white marble. 45.27 x 102.36 x 31.49 inches. 5,511 pounds. (Photo courtesy of Ana Maria Carrano)
“A Bridge of Light” showcases a decade of work by Deredia, who references them as “sculptural groups” because some pieces are composed of four sculptures illustrating the transmutation of matter. The exhibition proposes an inner journey, a reflection of oneself, an intimate path, and an encounter with the cosmos, he says.
Using similar techniques as the ancient Greek and Roman sculptors – by hand and without machines – each piece takes eight months to a year to be produced. Sizes vary from 6.5- to 30- feet long and weigh between 880 and 13,000 pounds. All are made at the artist’s workshop in Italy, located near the Carrara quarries. There, 34 employees assist, and the materials are mined from four nearby foundries.
Some sculptures are made of dark, polished bronze. Their curved forms reflect the sky, the water of Biscayne Bay or the silhouette of the person who is looking at them. Their shape seems to defy gravity. Other works are white and solid, hand-carved from the marble of Carrara.
Costa Rican sculptor Jorge Jiménez Deredia (Photo courtesy of Ignacio Guevara)
The sculptures compose a symbolic “description of the transmutation of matter” to be a bridge between the artist and the viewer. “I am convinced that in life’s journey, we participate in the great cosmic process of life and the universe. We help the universe fulfill its destiny with our existence,” explains Deredia. “In my sculptures, I try to take a snapshot of that spiritual baggage, that deep, cosmic history that we all have.”
He reveals that this is the idea of “A Bridge of Light” —”to go inside people’s spirituality and offer the opportunity to have communication on a deep level,” he says.
The exhibition’s location in the Maurice A. Ferré Park, next to the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and facing Biscayne Bay, also offers different associations of the sculptures with the city.
Jorge Jiménez Deredia, “El Alquimista,” Vratsa marble. 92.51 x 78.74 x 46.85 inches. 13,007 pounds. (Photo courtesy of Ana Maria Carrano)
Miguel Ferro, artistic director of Bayfront Park Management Trust, discusses the connection between the landscape and sculptures. “Behind them is the arena (formerly known as American Airlines Arena) and the Freedom Tower . . . the first canal entrance to the U.S. mainland and the other side is the (MacArthur) Causeway.” These are symbols of entry, connection, and settlement to the city.
Ferro says it was fascinating to watch the artist as he curated the exhibition, defining where to place each sculpture in balance with the landscape’s background. “It was magical to observe how the sculptures would harmonize within the space.”
Born in Heredia, Costa Rica, on Oct. 4, 1954, Deredia moved to Italy in 1976 when he received a scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara. He opened his studio there, worked as a sculptor and attended architecture classes at the University of Florence.
His work became known for his spiritual quest. In 1999, he was contacted by the Vatican in Rome, and after talking to Pope John Paul II, he produced the first monumental work by a Latin American artist to be placed in St. Peter’s Basilica, a 17.5-foot-tall statue of St. Marcellino Champagnat, which is housed in one of the niches built by Michelangelo. However, when Deredia explains the roots of his spiritual journey, he doesn’t connect his art to Catholicism. He instead refers to his quest in a broader symbolism: “the transmutation of the matter.”
Jorge Jiménez Deredia, “Génesis del Huevo.” Photo Ana María Carrano Bronze. 47.24 x 237 x 43.30 inches. 4,188.78 pounds (Photo courtesy of Ana Maria Carrano)
The artist recalls how a text written by art critic Pierre Restany in 1985 was key to understanding his work more as a transformational process. The French critic described Deredia’s work as “spiritual itineraries” rather than finished sculptures. Grasping the meaning of his work through the critic’s voice marked a moment of “spiritual revelation and cosmic illumination,” Deredia says.
Only a month later, he changed his last name from Jiménez Martínez to Jiménez Deredia (as the combination of the words “de Heredia/from Heredia,” his hometown). The moment also marked the beginning of the creation of the “Génesis” series, a group of four sculptures representing the mutation of matter.
Deredia’s “spiritual itineraries” can go from abstract to figurative. The essence is the symbolism.
“I invented the theory of transmutative symbolism,” Deredia explains. “Symbols help us to understand that dark part that lives inside us. Symbols are effective in helping us understand existence because they not only show us obvious things, they also show us things that are hidden.”
WHAT: “A Bridge of Light” by Costa Rican artist Jorge Jiménez Deredia
WHERE: Maurice A. Ferré Park, 1075 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, FL 33132
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
Germane Barnes explores Black identity in ‘Unsettled’ at Nina Johnson gallery
Written By Jonel Juste October 15, 2022 at 12:22 PM
Germane Barnes, “That’s Not The Right Size,” 2022, is included in the exhibition “Unsettled” at Nina Johnson gallery, Little Haiti, through Nov. 19. (Photo courtesy Greg Carideo)
As a Black man, architect Germane Barnes values African migration because it is the essence of his ancestors, he says. In an exhibition of his work, “Germane Barnes: Unsettled” at Nina Johnson gallery, he explores both memory and identity related to these values.
“Their migration was forced through enslavement while mine is free and a direct result of their sacrifices,” says Barnes. He speaks of “processes and culture” and of working in a field that “often ignores the African continent in favor of Eurocentric design ideologies . . .”
The specific body of work is a result of the artist’s recent time in Italy as a fellow of the American Academy in Rome, where he researched and explored North African influences of Classical Architecture and Design.
The artwork is “Unsettled” due to the fact that Barnes is an ever-evolving designer that continues to explore and learn more about his own ancestry. “It’s also representative of how Black people across the globe are often not allowed to settle anywhere outside of the African continent. Anger, resentment, and xenophobia are especially audible towards Blackness everywhere,” he says.
Germane Barnes, architect and designer, whose exhibition at Nina Johnson gallery explores the connection between race and structures. (Photo courtesy of Greg Carideo)
He’s also exploring the influence of built environments on Black domesticity. His practice is heavily influenced by his own history and global history, and he believes architecture can be used to tell stories that are otherwise left behind.
In addition to exploring migration from an African perspective, Barnes’ exhibition also relates his personal journey from Chicago to Cape Town, then Los Angeles to Miami.
“I am a Chicago-born designer whose parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents, are descendants of enslavement. And through their bravery and triumphs, I have been given tremendous privilege. They found their way to Chicago through the Great Migration, and I use architecture to tell their brilliant stories of perseverance,” explains Barnes, who is an assistant professor and the Director of The Community Housing & Identity Lab (CHIL) at the University of Miami School of Architecture.
In 2021, he received the Rome Prize for Architecture in 2021 from the American Academy in Rome, which is given to support innovative and cross-disciplinary work. And he was recently awarded the 2022 Miami Design District Annual Neighborhood Commission for his multi-scale installation “Rock | Roll,” which will be installed in November. The series of seating capsules, which are meant to be activated by passersby in the public spaces of the Miami Design District, is rendered in vibrant colors. An architectural-style dome is suspended overhead as part of the installation.
Architecture is the artist’s way of expressing himself, of telling stories through tectonics or rituals of space. His mission is to make architecture a griot, an orator of stories. Barnes as an architect also investigates the relationship between identity and architecture in his research and design practice.
Germane Barnes, Miami, 2022, Aubusson tapestry in New Zealand wool, 48 x 48.5 in. (Photo courtesy of Greg Carideo)
“I loosely associate my work and process with anthropology in that I am more interested in the ways we use space and manipulate the intentions of the architect than the physical space of architecture. I find a greater connection between the user and their culture in that process. I attempt to design in such a way that blends culture and history,” he says.
The work in “Unsettled” includes two tapestries, furniture that uses materials that reference migration, and five two-dimensional works. The purpose of the project was to reintroduce the art of hand-woven tapestries in contemporary design by using rigorous traditional techniques and premium materials with stellar workmanship. The featured tapestries are literal maps that highlight redlining and segregation.
Throughout “Unsettled,” Barnes examines Black migration within and outside of the continental United States while blurring the lines between design and architecture.
“We have long championed the overlap and intersection of art and design, finding Germane who is a pioneer in this space, particularly as it relates to histories of the African Diaspora within the United States,” says Johnson whose gallery in Little Haiti is presenting the exhibition.
“Knowing he was living in Miami, made me certain we would have much to work on together. Since then, the world has taken notice with so many accolades. I am thrilled we have the excuse to share his work with his hometown,” says Johnson.
WHAT: Germane Barnes: “Unsettled”
WHERE: Nina Johnson, 6315 NW 2nd Ave., Miami
WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday, through Nov. 19, 2022
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
At Spinello Projects, Antonia Wright pushes back on abortion ban
Written By Elisa Turner October 9, 2022 at 11:10 AM
Antonia Wright, video still for “And So With Ends Comes Beginnings,” 2019-2020, single channel video. Filmed when Wright was 9 months pregnant, it is part of “I Came to See the Damage That Was Done and the Treasures That Prevail” at Spinello Projects, Miami. (Photo courtesy of the artist and Spinello Projects)
In shocking irony, the death in North London of revered feminist artist Paula Rego at age 87 on June 8 coincided with intense debate over whether abortion would remain legal in the United States. Nearly three weeks later, Supreme Court decision Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overruled historic 1973 decision Roe v. Wade conferring on women the right to an abortion.
Rego is hailed for her “Abortion Series,” a large-scale series of pastels from the late 1990s. They were conceived to protest the defeat of a 1998 referendum to decriminalize abortion in her native Portugal. Her art was later credited with altering public opinion to allow legal abortions in Portugal in 2007.
In this influential series, a single-clothed woman in anguished pain is depicted alone, sometimes curled in a fetal position in bed or with knees drawn up next to a bowl. She’s a grim survivor of an illegal abortion. “I didn’t want to show blood, gore or anything to sicken, because people don’t want to look at it then,” Rego said at the time. “And what you want to do is make people look.”
Antonia Wright, “Women in Labor (Graphic Score),” 2022, unique cyanotype photograms on watercolor paper. Photograms inspired by Wright’s sound art installation of the same title. (Photo courtesy of Spinello Projects)
Miami artist Antonia Wright is among a growing number of women artists who share Rego’s outrage over anti-abortion forces and who create art in protest. “With the reversing of Roe, I feel anxiety for younger women and the fear they must have around unexpected pregnancy,” Wright says.
She’s also a board member of Planned Parenthood and mother of two young children. Her arresting art is now on view at Spinello Projects. It addresses women’s challenged right to control their reproductive health. The work is both fierce and delicate, resonant with terrible beauty.
At Spinello, Wright’s “I Came to See the Damage That Was Done and the Treasures That Prevail” brings together photograms, glass sculptural objects, video, and a tough-to-forget sound art installation, “Women in Labor.”
While Rego said she wanted to make people look, Wright wants to make people listen. There’s absolutely nothing to see in Wright’s “Women in Labor.” What you do see unfolds only in your imagination. Wright gives us no visual cues, only absolute darkness, surely recalling life inside the womb.
To experience “Women in Labor,” you walk into the darkness of a single gallery. A cacophony of screams soon surrounds you. You’ll hear a shrill bleat. It sounds like an animal brought to slaughter. Then ragged, wordless shouts multiply. They rise into a horrific crescendo. They suggest the ear-splitting chaos of a mass shooting.
Abruptly, moans soften into frail sweetness. There’s low, rhythmic breathing, an almost ecstatic, even orgiastic sigh. It dissolves into seconds of silence, of peace. And then a strident wail tears into more tumult, a butchered world of pain where peace is a shredded memory.
Antonia Wright, “My Daughter’s First Hammer,” 2022, lead crystal glass. A fierce and delicate sculptural object protests abortion bans. (Photo courtesy of Spinello Projects)
Wright calls “Women in Labor” a “data sonification artwork” for our post-Roe era. It’s produced by an algorithm she developed with data reflecting miles women must travel in 11 states with abortion bans in order to receive an abortion. That mileage data has been randomly combined with soft and more intense sounds of 11 women in labor.
Because this installation is operated by a self-generative program, the sequence of sounds constantly changes. “You’ll never hear the same sound combination twice,” she says.
Those more intense and tormented sounds signify how women’s reproductive rights are being violated by anti-abortion legislation, requiring the labor of traveling long distances to receive this procedure. Economic pain is also part of the labor, Wright explains, as such travel often means women must do extra work to pay for a hotel and, if they are mothers, childcare.
“All of that labor is time and money,” she says.
How did Wright get these indelible sounds of women giving birth? Partnering with a lawyer to create a contract, Wright explains that she asked her own midwife to sign a contract stating that Wright owned the sounds the midwife recorded from her patients. While the actual women whose sounds we hear signed a contract agreeing to participate anonymously in this artwork, Wright reveals that the audio includes sounds recorded from her own labor.
The artist says she offered to pay the midwife for her work recording these sounds, but the midwife declined. Wright adds that she hired a woman-owned business to distribute gift baskets with post-pregnancy presents to the women who participated.
“I know it seems contradictory to think about women having babies in the context of abortion rights,” says Wright. “But for me, it’s part of the same conversation about reproductive justice and letting women make decisions over their own health care.”
Prolific and innovative, Wright excels at mining visual and verbal metaphors. It’s no surprise that her website lists an MFA in Creative Writing and Poetry from New York’s New School, as well as exhibits in New York, Los Angeles, Vienna, Buenos Aires, as well as Miami.
Antonia Wright, “But the Sky Was Never Quite the Same Shade of Blue Again” 1&2, 2022, unique cyanotype photograms on watercolor paper. Photograms address breaking the glass ceiling for working women. (Photo courtesy of Spinello Projects)
Performance has long been part of her practice. At Spinello, the video “And So With Ends Comes Beginnings” was shot when Wright was nine months pregnant. Filling the screen is her belly protruding from a bath of non-toxic silver paint. As she breathes, her voluptuously rounded belly rises and falls against a swirling waterscape soon overlaid with scenes of cranes and housing from Miami’s nonstop construction. Eventually, her belly recalls a deserted island engulfed by water. Unnerving and mesmerizing, this video depicts the resilient treasure of a new life entering a world awash in challenges wrought by rising seas.
While Miami’s famously blue waters are absent from that video, they are indirectly present in her intensely blue cyanotype photograms, created when paper is treated with photosensitive chemicals and exposed to sunlight. Wright’s photograms bear white clusters of circular lines, echoing the sheet of glass she placed over each paper, then slammed with a hammer before exposing it to sunlight.
Evoking assaults on glass ceilings for working women, these photograms deftly layer beauty with violence. Wright affirms a shocking post-Roe world of pain we can’t ignore.
WHAT: Antonia Wright: “I Came to See the Damage That Was Done and the Treasures That Prevail”
WHEN: noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, by appointment only, through Oct. 29
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
Jennifer Basile explores a disappearing everglades at LnS Gallery
Written By Douglas Markowitz October 6, 2022 at 3:01 PM
“Lasting Impressions: A Cessation of Existence” is Jennifer Basile’s second solo exhibition at LnS Gallery featuring works created in 2021 and 2022. (Photo courtesy of LnS Gallery)
Surveying the exquisitely rendered Everglades landscapes in “Lasting Impressions: A Cessation of Existence” at LnS Gallery, viewers may notice a crucial, intentional omission in several works. The landscapes are empty of all animal life.
In some cases, the pastoral scenes in Jennifer Basile’s prints and mixed media works simply depict the beautifully desolate landscapes found amid South Florida’s famed “river of grass.” There could be fauna hiding in the reeds, or beneath the water. But Basile, an environmentalist, wants to make us consider that, because of human action, the landscape is being emptied.
Jennifer Basile, “Cypress Dome,” 2022, is the largest work in the exhibition covering an entire wall of the gallery. (Photo courtesy of Douglas Markowitz)
“Cypress Dome,” the largest of her prints covering an entire wall of the gallery, exemplifies this idea. On the wall to the left of the black-and-white print showing the titular tree-covered island in the swamp, a silhouette of a bird can be seen, appearing as if it were cut out of the landscape. It flies above a pattern of stenciled houses, painted so lightly they’re barely visible, that represents the cookie-cutter single-family housing tracts that are slowly swallowing the ecosystem.
The artist expresses worry over the degree to which development is encroaching on the park’s borders. Her fears aren’t unfounded: On Sept. 22, Miami-Dade County Commission vote to extend the urban development boundary failed by just one vote.
“It’s sneaking up on us,” says Basile.
“Lasting Impressions: A Cessation of Existence,” at LnS Gallery through Nov. 19, is a solo exhibition of prints and mixed media works by Jennifer Basile. (Photo courtesy of LnS Gallery)
Her work reflects a profound anxiety over the effects of human action on the earth’s remaining natural landscapes. She keeps a “bucket list” of other national parks to visit in order to see them before they’re destroyed by climate change.
“‘We need to get to Glacier National Park, it’s the last glacier, it’s melting!’” she jokes, imitating a conversation she had with her partner. “These are the things that keep me up at night,” says Basile.
Having lived in South Florida since the early 1990s, Basile, who is also a professor at Miami-Dade College, frequently visits Everglades National Park to hike and bird watch. She wants her work to inspire a similar passion for the Everglades, letting the natural beauty depicted in her prints to speak for itself — viewing “quiet advocacy” as an alternative to the traditional tropes of environmental activism.
“I’m trying to advocate for the environment, but I’m not trying to show you all the obvious things, like the plastic bags and the thrown-out garbage,” she says. “I think we’re actually becoming, sadly, conditioned to seeing that.”
Basile’s work and its perspective is right at home at LnS Gallery. The art space in Coral Gables founded by married gallerists Luisa Lignarolo and Sergio Cernuda has championed South Florida artists since opening in 2017, holding shows for Miami-based artists such as Michael Loveland, William Osorio and the late Carlos Alfonzo.
“Our mission was to assist and represent Miami-based artists in a very professional realm, where we’re introducing a more international thought process,” says Cernuda. “We work a lot with museum curators, art historians, we love publishing, we’ve done 25 publications in five years.”
Jennifer Basile, “Echo,” 2022. (Photo courtesy of Douglas Markowitz)
Basile was one of the first artists to join the gallery upon its launch in 2017, and her first solo show for the gallery, which presented a similar series of prints, was titled “The Power of Print: Iconic Images of the American Landscape.” Her familiarity with natural landscapes can be seen in the details of her work, as can her expertise with her chosen medium of printing.
In a series of small-scale works, for instance, she recycles the glassine, a layer of paper used during the printing process to prevent ink bleeding, creating colorful, almost psychedelic landscapes for her birds to explore in a process that marries sustainable practice with creative adaptability.
“The endless possibilities of printmaking is what motivates me,” she admits. “I’ve layered my paint, I’ve used different processes of painting, but there’s something in my brain about hard work, this idea of manual labor,” alluding to the physically demanding process of carving the wooden blocks used to make prints.
Basile began printmaking while studying art at the University of Miami. Having also grown bored with the ceramics she was studying at the time, a professor who visited her studio told her she “painted like a printmaker” and encouraged her to take a class in the subject. After making her first print she took up the discipline and never looked back.
“Just pulling the paper off the block, it’s really thrilling for me,” she says.
The solo exhibition features prints and mixed media works by Jennifer Basile at LnS Gallery. (Photo courtesy of LnS Gallery)
Basile’s work also owes much to the woodblock printmaking tradition of Japan, which influenced western artists such as Van Gogh. Works like “Long Pine Key,” with its saturated color palettes and slight three-dimensional effect, recall the early-20th century Japanese artist Hasui Kawase. The black and white prints such as “Cypress Dome,” which was drafted initially with a ballpoint pen before being re-drafted with an acrylic marker for a unique hand-drawn effect, resembles the thick black ink marks of traditional shodō calligraphy.
The artist admits to being enamored with Japan. Many of the works in “Lasting Impressions” are printed on washi, or traditional Japanese paper, and the artist also constructs the larger wall-size prints in grids resembling shoji screens. Yet as technically and stylistically as they are indebted to the Asian nation, they are works only a Floridian could produce, concerned with a place and plight only a Floridian would appreciate so deeply.
WHAT: Jennifer Basile: “Lasting Impressions: A Cessation of Existence”
WHEN: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; noon to 5 p.m. Saturday through Nov. 19
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
Bogota’s Ledania brings street art indoors for Museum of Graffiti show ‘Private Spaces’
Written By Vanessa Reyes September 29, 2022 at 9:31 PM
She’s one of the most prominent artists on the Bogota graffiti scene. Diana Ordoñez, known artistically as Ledania, brings her art to Miami’s Museum of Graffiti in a show through November in Wynwood. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
Graffiti. The word itself can cause a strong reaction. Many see it as the defacement of public walls and buildings. But graffiti has arrived to become something else — art.
“So many people are focused on whether (the art) is legal or illegal and they are not looking at the sheer talent. When you look at Ledania’s work, you see pure talent with aerosol,” says Allison Freidin, co-founder of the Museum of Graffiti in Wynwood.
Diana Ordoñez, known artistically as Ledania, began graffiti painting 15 years ago on the streets of Bogota, Colombia.
Diana Ordoñez, known artistically as Ledania, began graffiti painting 15 years ago on the streets of Bogota, Colombia. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
“The most significant part (for me) was that I didn’t want only people who knew about art to see my work, but everyone who takes up the same space I do,” says Ordoñez. “It’s a motto I took upon myself — to take over the walls that were built to divide people and spaces and use them as a unifying piece through art and color.”
The 34-year-old has taken the motto to heart throughout the world in the past decade, displaying her murals in places such as the Artscape Festival in Sweden and the Curitiba Biennial in Brazil. Now, she is bringing her solo exhibition, titled “Ledania: Private Spaces,” indoors to Miami’s Museum of Graffiti.
While “Ledania: Private Spaces” is only the second solo show of a female artist at the Museum of Graffiti, which opened in 2019, Freidin says the mostly male-dominated world of graffiti art is opening up to women.
Ledania, “Untitled,” 2022.
“It used to be really rare (to have female graffiti artists), but now, as a new generation of writers is coming up, there have been certain artists like Lady Pink (first female artist to show at the Museum) who have paved the way for more women to come,” says Freidin.
Ordóñez says her experience as a writer (what graffiti artists are called since graffiti is a letter-based art) has changed over time, not just as a woman in the field but as an artist.
“You discover new tools, and you start growing even more because you have to start climbing higher places and turn in art at higher elevations, so you’re dealing with climate change and wall texture changes (that) make the art dependent on improvisation,” says Ordoñez, who uses primarily aerosol spray for her art.
“That is one of the reasons I love graffiti because I am not someone who plans most things out. I just wait to see how the improvisation moves the piece along.”
Unlike her previous work, she says the Miami exhibition brings “part of Latin America” with her into a much more private space. She says for the exhibit she chose to pair vibrant colors, florals, and forestry with the feeling of nature that would be a natural fit in a place of rest.
“It will be a fusion of what I started with, which is graffiti, but it is very important to me for people to be able to bring a piece of this outside artwork into the spaces that are the most private, which is the home, office or wherever it is that they rest,” she says.
Ledania, Mi Comedia, 2022, spray paint on found furniture; on wall, Tono Grises 1, 2022, stained glass on backlit mount, Tono Grises 2, 2022, stained glass on backlit mount. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
The conceptual aspect of “Ledania: Private Spaces” is important to note. It isn’t just a matter of coming to look at paintings on a wall, but rather becoming a part of the art, according to Ordoñez. That collaboration between spectator and artist includes aninteractive andimmersive site-specific installation that brings a more three-dimensional quality. It’s this excitement of depth that runs throughout all the work she creates.
“Art is really the only way a person has freedom,” she says. “A person who can express themselves freely through any kind of art, whether it’s music, theater, painting, or whatever helps you express yourself in the most sincere way, helps (us) not feel limited by the standards that society imposes. For me, art and culture and everything within are what gives people breath within this grid-like existence that we live day to day.”
She says her inspiration comes from the people she meets, either working in a public place or in the many countries she visits.
“I am used to painting with the noise on the streets, the onlookers walking by and talking to me and it’s almost like they are taking the art out of me, so (inspiration) can happen at any moment, at any time. But what takes the creativity to another level is learning about other cultures,” says Ordoñez, who says she spends about 10 months out of the year traveling.
She cites Asia, Japan and Singapore, specifically, as sources of great creativity.
Ledania, “Untitled,” 2022.
It’s no surprise that Ordoñez derived part of her artistic name from Leda, the famous female seduced by Zeus in Greek mythology, and whose Greek origin means happy.
Ordoñez says she is happy that she is able to create a life and has found success doing her art, something that her parents, both artists, dreamt about but never fully realized.
“My dad is a muralist, my mom is an artisan and they both studied art, but on their own time because they liked it, but they didn’t pursue it because they thought it was too complicated to actually make a living off it,” she explains. “At the beginning, there was talk about (me) pursuing graphic design or public relations, just somewhere where a paycheck was more of a sure thing, but as much as I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to think that way. I just had to be more free.”
WHAT: “Ledania: Private Spaces”
WHERE: Museum of Graffiti, 276 NW 26th St., Miami
WHEN: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekends through Friday, Nov.18
COST: $16. Children ages 13 and under admitted free
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
Alternative Art Space Locust Projects Turning 25 With Big Move
Written By Michelle F. Solomon September 20, 2022 at 12:01 AM
Executive Director Lorie Mertes stands in front of the new home of Locust Projects in Little River. The alternative art space will move from its Design District location in February 2023. (Photo courtesy of Pedro Wazzan)
The first exhibition for Miami’s Locust Projects, titled “Pigs and Lint,” was inspired by a discovery that Westen Charles, one of the alternative art spaces founders created after he was enlisted to fix his grandmother’s broken clothes dryer.
Miami’s longest-running nonprofit alternative art space is gearing up to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2023. With a move to a larger space in the works for its silver jubilee which will begin a new chapter for the organization, something that will never disappear is why Charles, along with his cohorts, artists Brian Cooper, known as COOPER, and Elizabeth Withstandley began Locust Projects in the first place.
“Everywhere that we wanted to show in Miami would have never shown our art,” says Charles, a working artist who teaches fine art at Miami’s Design and Architecture Senior High School (DASH), and who still serves on Locust Projects board of directors.
Locust Projects founders Brian Cooper, Elizabeth Withstandley and Westen Charles circa 1998. (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)
Since that 1999 inaugural show, which was inside a 3,500-square-foot dilapidated warehouse at 105 NW 23rd St., in Wynwood, which the trio rented for what Charles remembers to be about $600 a month, Locust Projects has remained an incubator of new art and ideas. The exhibition space is currently on North Miami Avenue in Miami’s Design District, a little over a mile from the original location.
In February of 2023, Locust Projects will move back to a warehouse, this time in Little River. The 8,000-square foot, open floor-plan space, at 297 NE 69th St., will double the size of its current location.
“It’s always been the idea of having a space to support artists in creating ambitious work in both scale and ideas and encouraging risk-taking and experimentation,” according to Lorie Mertes, who became the executive director of Locust Projects on, what she vividly remembers as “the eve of its 20th anniversary in 2018.”
Locust Projects’ first location, Wynwood, in its first year 1998. (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)
It was 1998 when the idea for Locust Projects began. Charles was enrolled in the University of Miami Master of Fine Arts program and still kept in touch with two of his classmates he became close to while an undergraduate at New York’s Pratt Institute. “I convinced them to come to Miami and we got a studio space together. (Wynwood) was a really dangerous neighborhood then. At the time we started there, we couldn’t imagine what it would become – the growth of the art world that would happen in Miami.”
He remembers the shows they produced of other artists were bringing people into the Wynwood warehouse. “There was a desire for art then. These were hardcore art people that were coming in. They weren’t socialites that were trying to keep up with anything. They were just people that liked art,” Charles recalls.
Two of those people who “liked art” were collectors Dennis and Debra Scholl, change agents who saw a future for Locust Projects. “It wasn’t our interest to become professional, to get professional gallery managers. We were artists,” says Charles. “We wound up meeting Dennis and Debra.” Charles confides that he told Dennis that he wasn’t sure how much longer the trio could keep Locust Projects afloat. “We got to the point where we were going to have to shut down. We couldn’t afford it anymore,” Charles says, adding that it was also taking time away from the trio’s own artistic practices.
Like it was yesterday, he remembers Dennis telling him: ” ‘You can’t stop. You have to keep going. I’ll show you how to do it to where it can be sustainable, and where you don’t have to do everything yourself.’ ”
Charles says the pair helped them form a board of directors and apply to become a not-for-profit 501c3. They sought out and got grants and, in 2006, they hired a full-time director.
Dennis became the founding board chair. For the last 14 years, Debra has been the board chair.
Jedediah Ceaser’s mural poster project on the outside of Locust Projects, Wynwood, in 2003. (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)
“We would go to Locust exhibitions when they were in Wynwood,” Debra recalls. “The three artists that founded Locust had days jobs and they were working artists, but they wanted to do something for the arts community where they allowed an artist to come in and make whatever that person wanted without worrying about having it financed or making something for someone to purchase,” she says.
Debra says she and her husband “loved” the idea of the freedom that Locust Projects gave to artists to experiment.
“Now, 25 years later, our intent is the same and even though we’re getting a larger space, it will just allow us to let artists do even more with their practice. I can’t speak for every artist, but I think it is a place that really excites and invigorates them to continue to try different things. That’s the core of Locust Projects,” says Debra.
The new space with its 17-foot-high ceilings and access to an outdoor courtyard will allow more “room for artists to roam,” says Mertes.
One of the most confining hindrances in the current Design District location, she says, is that the size of the space has kept public gatherings small, and interactions limited. The executive director would like for people to see what is happening inside Locust Projects and to be part of the process.
“This move enables us to do that and to invite the public – to have them be involved in a more significant, hopefully, impactful way,” says Mertes.
Inside the new Locust Projects’ space at 297 NE 67th St. in Miami’s Little River neighborhood. (Photo courtesy of Pedro Wazzan)
While Locust Projects has plans to purchase an exhibition space of its own one day, the new location in Little River is a five-year lease with an option to renew for an additional five years. A John S. and James L. Knight Foundation grant in 2019 was “a transformative $1 million spread over five years,” says Mertes, strengthening the organization’s focus on “space, people, and programming.”
Locust Projects Board Member Diane “Dede” Moss made a matching leadership grant towards the move to the new space, according to Mertes, adding that it is meant to be a catalyst for launching a 25th Anniversary Campaign over the next year.
“We are here for the artists and the public’s good, which means that we remain free of charge. In terms of funding, that will always be part of the core value of the organization to make sure that we are accessible, equitable, and inclusive,” says Mertes.
Locust Projects will continue exhibitions in its Design District space with new exhibitions opening Nov. 19 and running through Feb. 4.: Ronny Quevedo: “ule ole allez” and T. Ellion Mansa, “Room for the living/Room for the dead.”
Currently, three exhibitions are on display through Nov. 5.
WHAT: Leo Castaneda: “Herramientas (Levels & Bosses)”, Zac Hacmon, “Mia,” and a group exhibition entitled “Sound, Stories.”
WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday until Nov. 5.
WHERE: Locust Projects, 3852 North Miami Ave., Miami.
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
Under-represented artists explore personal legacies in ‘Depth of Identity’
Written By Jenna Farhat August 11, 2022 at 1:49 PM
Michael Elliott, “Seeds of the Last Tide (Clotilda),” acrylic on canvas, 33 in X 52 in, is part of the exhibition “Depth of Identity: Art as Memory and Archive” at Green Space Miami through Oct. 20. (Photo courtesy of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator)
Longtime Miami art curator Rosie Gordon-Wallace says while trauma may be part of the immigrant experience, “Depth of Identity: Art as Memory and Archive” takes in that component while looking at the legacy of the African, Indo, and Caribbean diaspora in American cities.
“The trauma is a part of our lives, and it’s a part of our stories,” says the curator, explaining that the exhibition at Green Space Miami examines the artists’ interactions with their own identities. Gordon-Wallace says the artists she worked with, who represent Jamaica, Barbados, Cuba, Guadeloupe, Suriname, Haiti, Kenya, and Korea, stand for “this really complicated, hyphenated definition of race.”
The exhibition on display from Aug. 11 to Oct. 20, organized by Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, will feature visual art, music, film, and performance art from 19 artists.
Kurt Nahar, “Wake up and listen,” mixed media on canvas, 299 cm x 157.5 cm. (Photo courtesy of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator)
While there are numerous themes in the work that tap into national political conversations around racism and critical race theory, Gordon-Wallace says there’s a more personal twist. She says curation for the exhibition was about “asking (artists) to look at their particular identity through the lens of art, memory, and archive.”
That identity is evident in “how people turn up in their communities, how they walk, how they talk, the cuisine, the music, the dance, the memories that they have,” she says.
Gordon-Wallace is the founder and president of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator (DVCAI), an arts space dedicated to emerging Caribbean artists and artists of color in Miami, which has existed for 26 years. Some of the artists featured in “Depth of Identity: Art as Memory and Archive” have worked with the curator through DVCAI for years, according to Gordon-Wallace.
Stephanie J. Woods, “Shake EM,” 1 of 3 photographs, 24 in X 36 in. (Photo courtesy of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator)
“My methodology in curating is that I will work with artists over extended periods of time,” she says. “The goal is to take them from emerging to mid-career (artists).”
One of the featured artists, Asser St. Val, emigrated from Haiti to Fort Lauderdale at age 14. He said coming to the United States forced him to reckon with his race in a way he never had to do as a teenager in his native country.
“I realized I was different, that I was Black,” St. Val says. “And now, I have to defend myself. Because of that, I became very interested in identity and in studying the self. What is this obsession with my color?”
To understand, he began reading about the biology of melanin, the pigment that makes a person’s skin, hair, and eyes darker in color. The research informed his mixed-media paintings, St. Val says.
“He’s having this dialogue around what melanin promotes, what many people think they understand from just the color of our skins,” Gordon-Wallace says. “He tricks you into looking at the body and then plays with your mind as to what you think these folks can and cannot do as well.”
St. Val says the reckoning with his identity went on to inform his artwork.
“I started reading on Afro-centric information history,” he said. “I went down a rabbit hole in researching melanin and I found out so much. I wanted to explore those (ideas) in art and paintings. My work is in-depth research on melanin.”
Asser St. Val, “I3AGU6NTM9,” 48 in x 80 in, mixed media on Masonite. (Photo courtesy of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator)
St. Val’s three-part painting series, titled “Magical Entities,” is included in “Depth of Identity: Art as Memory and Archive.” Each painting in the series features a bright orange figure with exaggerated feminine or masculine features. Their bodies are set against surrealist, otherworldly dreamscapes. Their faces are obscured by alien-like forms which suggest lives of their own.
“I’m basically trying to master my subconscious mind, and I’m sure people will respond to it,” St. Val says. “They will. . . personalize it in their own way. I hope someone who looks at (the paintings) can identify a spiritual entity there.”
The exhibition will take the featured artists from the emerging stage of their careers to mid-career designation, Gordon-Wallace says.
Autumn T. Thomas, “Lift Every Voice,” Paduak wood, wenge wood, resin and copper, 56 in X 62 in X 3 in. (Photo courtesy of Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator)
In addition to St. Val, other artists included in the show are Aisha Tandiwe Bell, Samo Davis, Michael Elliott, Yacine Tilala Fall, Grettel Arrate Hechavarría, Caroline Holder, Kim Myung-Sik, Izia Lee Lindsay, Suchitra Mattai, Bruno Métura, Mazola Wa Mwashighadi, Kurt Nahar, Julian Pardo, DhiradjRamsamoed, Autumn T. Thomas, René Tosari, Stephanie J. Woods and Kim Yantis.
For St. Val, emerging as a mid-career artist means that creating art is a full-time career rather than a part-time endeavor. “That was the ultimate goal from the start,” he says.
WHAT: “Depth of Identity: Art as Memory and Archive”
WHEN: Thursday, Aug. 11 through Thursday, Oct. 20. Hours are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday, and Sunday by appointment.
WHERE: Green Space Miami, 7200 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
DJ’s pandemic street photography subject of HistoryMiami’s ‘Capture’
Written By Jonel Juste July 28, 2022 at 4:34 PM
The photograph “Racism is a Pandemic” is one of the works featured in “CAPTURE: A Portrait of the Pandemic” opening at HistoryMiami Museum Center for Photography on Friday, Aug. 5. (Photo courtesy of Rahsaan Alexander)
Many people lost their jobs during the pandemic and DJ Rahsaan “Fly Guy” Alexander was no exception. As South Beach clubs closed and the entertainment industry practically grinded to a halt, the professional deejay had no choice but to stay home. Yet, he refused to stay idle.
He grabbed a camera and began snapping pictures. He relentlessly chased images of a time fraught with confinement, joblessness, and protests, but also of love and change. “CAPTURE: A Portrait of the Pandemic” exhibits 60 photographs at the HistoryMiami Museum opening on Friday, Aug. 5.
The pandemic photography was a catharsis for Alexander, he says, and a way of lifting his spirits during a difficult time and showing future generations how life can go on in the face of tragedy.
“Mom Dukes,” a photograph of the artist’s mother, is one of more than 60 works on display in “CAPTURE: A Portrait of the Pandemic.” (Photo courtesy of Rahsaan Alexander)
“I think that is something that should be immortalized, and people should be able to look back at it for the years to come,” says Alexander, who has become one of the city’s most sought after DJs in the past 15 years.
“As you can imagine, when the industry shut down in the city and the world, I didn’t have a job to go back to for four months. And during that time, there was a lot of racial injustice happening with the murder of George Floyd, a lot of protests and riots,” he recalls.
While idly at home watching television and being inundated with images of tragedy, he felt the need to step out of his comfort zone, go out into the streets, and capture history.
He also felt there was a lack of coverage of the events happening in Miami.
“I would see things occurring in Minneapolis, Dallas, Atlanta, D.C… but I didn’t really see much coverage or focus on Miami. I felt like I needed to photograph those images,” says the Guyanese-born artist.
“CAPTURE: A Portrait of the Pandemic” is an exhibition that Alexander says gives a visual representation of the events that occurred in the city of Miami since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. He says the display is anchored by three of his favorite photographs, “Racism is a Pandemic,” “Listen to Her,” and a photo of his mother, “Mom Dukes,” taken during quarantine.
Rahsaan “Fly Guy” Alexander took to the streets to photograph the life-altering year of 2020. (Photo courtesy of Anthony Anderson)
Alexander’s passion for photography started when he was young, he says, and he describes himself as an artist who tried different things before turning his attention to the turntables.
“I had photography classes in fourth grade and it was something that I wanted to pursue. But when I went to university, I got sidetracked, and I never really had the opportunity to be in photography,” he regrets.
Fast forward decades later and he became one of the more high-profile deejays in Miami, being photographed, and recorded on video for so many years in the clubs.
“When the shutdown happened, I heard that voice inside telling me to take my camera again. It was like an instant reconnection, and I felt like a 17-year-old kid in high school again,” where he says he was doing a lot of photography while a senior at Miami Killian Senior High School.
“I didn’t realize how much I missed having the camera in my hand,” he admits.
Locals in historic Overtown are captured in the photo “Towners,” part of Rahsaan Alexander’s exhibition at HistoryMiami. (Photo courtesy of Rahsaan Alexander)
During the anti-racist protests, the photographer took images throughout Miami at the risk of catching COVID, he says, taking pictures while in a crowd of protesters. He confesses that he was anxious about getting the disease, but it was something that he was willing to risk.
“Thousands of people felt the need to go out and express themselves and be a part of the voice. And here I was out there.”
Also included in the exhibit are images of homelessness, something the artist says he nearly experienced himself. “In 2020 I was threatened with eviction two times. I did not have an income and I couldn’t pay my rent, so I had to enroll in a rental assistance program, otherwise, I could have been on the streets.”
Although day-t0-day life has mostly returned to normal, Alexander does not want people to forget that the world and Miami have been forever changed.
His pandemic experience led to the publication of a book of his photographs entitled “Miami with Love” and the documentary “Pivot: a 2020 Story,” an introspective look at how he rekindled his passion for photography during the exhibition.
A homeless man sends a message to police in Alexander’s “He Can’t Breathe.” (Photo courtesy of Rahsaan Alexander)
“CAPTURE: A Portrait of the Pandemic” is Alexander’s third exhibit and the first to be shown on a large scale at HistoryMiami Center for Photography. The exhibit will open to the public with a VIP event on the evening of Thursday, Aug. 4 and to the public on Friday, Aug. 5.
“Rahsaan is a talented, multifaceted artist,” says Chris Barfield, HHM’s curator of exhibitions.
“He came to us a year ago with his book and we immediately recognized that he not only documented the upheaval and change Miami has experienced since 2020, but he also lived it,” says Barfield, adding that Alexander’s work is telling Miami’s stories, which is at the core of the museum’s mission. “Capture is a personal story, it’s Miami’s story.”
Barfield hopes that museum visitors recognize that much of what Alexander photographed is still ongoing. He cites the ever presence of racial injustice and economic disparity and the continuing public health concern of COVID-19. “These issues today are all a part of what makes Miami, Miami,” he concludes.
As for Alexander, he’s back in the deejay booth but isn’t putting down his camera.
“Photography’s an extension of my artistic career. I’m an artist whose artistry comes out in different mediums. I did rap music before I started deejaying. I wrote stories before I started rapping. Being an artist is the foundation of it all,” he says.
WHAT: “CAPTURE: A Portrait of the Pandemic”
WHEN: Friday, Aug. 5 to Monday, Jan 8, 2023. Opening reception, Thursday, Aug. 4 from 7 to 9 p.m. is free, but registration required. Hours are Wednesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m, Sunday noon to 4 p.m. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
WHERE: HistoryMiami Museum, 101 West Flagler St, Miami
TICKETS: Free for members, $10 for adults, $5 for children
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
YoungArts exhibition in Miami co-curated with NYU explores Black visual narratives
Written By Sergy Odiduro July 25, 2022 at 11:12 PM
Phylicia Ghee’s “Grandma / i am accused of tending to the past. Portrait of my Grandmother” (2020), is featured in the YoungArts exhibition “Home: Reimagining Interiority,” on view through Monday, Aug. 1.
A man and a woman walk together on a dirt path. He leads the way with a determined gait, balancing several items on his head.
The woman is carrying items too. On top of her crown sits a wrapped bundle. She trails behind as a child straddles her hip.
The scene is from Mozambique and it is presented by lens based artist Glenn Espinosa.
It is a common sight from a place that he calls home.
“That particular body of work came from street photography,” says Espinosa. “It is the magic of the ordinary.”
His series “Patria Amada/ LovedFatherland” is part of an exhibit entitled “Home: Reimagining Interiority,” which features the work of 20 YoungArts winners who explore Black visual narratives.
It will be on view through Monday, Aug. 1 at the YoungArts Gallery, 2100 Biscayne Blvd in Miami.
Dr. Joan Morgan, cultural critic and feminist author, as well as Dr. Deborah Willis, an artist, photographer and curator, are both directors at the institute and signed on to spearhead the event.
” ‘Home: Reimagining Interiority’ was an idea that both co-curators, Dr. Joan Morgan and Dr. Deborah Willis had been investigating at NYU,” explains Múnera. “While working with researchers at the Center for Black Visual Culture, they began exploring this idea of home and how it has been changing because of the pandemic. They also asked artists and scholars to think about what home means to them.”
Múnera says that launching the exhibit together was a perfect match.
“When I asked them if they would be interested in co-curating the show, they immediately said, ‘You know, we’re investigating this topic at the university level, but it would be really interesting to prompt the artists at YoungArts that are of a different generation and who maybe look at home in a different way.’ And so it’s wonderful to see lens-based artists and writers come together and show their work around home through different mediums,” says Múnera.
Daveed Baptiste, “How we found it” (2017). (Photo courtesy of YoungArts)
Eli Dreyfuss’ piece entitled, “A piece of Me” tackles the theme of home through a discussion of patriotism. In it, stars and stripes serve as a backdrop for the image of a young man who is posing on his birthday. His eyes are closed, perhaps deep in thought.
“What I found unique about that portrait was the fact that he was at peace with himself in that very moment,” says Dreyfuss. “Despite all the chaos in the world, he’s just standing there in my studio.”
The piece is but just one example of Dreyfuss’ ability of capturing the souls of his subjects as he pulls their essence through his camera lens. “I call myself a creative storyteller with the ultimate goal to connect with other people,” he says.
It is through this connection achieved with the original portrait that ultimately evolves into something else – something that for him was as equally as poignant.
“Two months later, during the Black Lives Matter protests, I felt very affected,” says Dreyfuss. “It moved me to do something, to make a statement. Obviously with COVID, I couldn’t go out and shoot any pictures of people. That photo stood out the most because the whole world was in shambles and he’s standing there looking at me through my screen. So, I decided to blend it with the American flag,” explains Dreyfuss. “It was at that point in the world when everyone had questions about freedom. And you had to ask yourself, ‘What does freedom mean?’ I wanted to showcase the beauty of that peaceful moment, because there’s that juxtaposition with the chaos.”
Carlos Hernandez, “Savannah in Her Bedroom” (2021). (Photo courtesy of YoungArts)
This will be the first time that a YoungArts exhibit will travel to New York. Múnera hopes that it will open the door to future opportunities.
“Thinking big picture, we would love to be able to partner with educational institutions or other galleries in New York, Miami or Los Angeles to take on shows that we have produced here. So that is something that we are hoping to expand within our exhibition program but (we) feel quite lucky that ‘Home: Reimagining Interiority’ will be the one to make that first round.”
Testimonies on how young artists view their individualized concepts of home are what make the exhibition so captivating, according to Múnera.
“There is a lot of power in their storytelling,” she says. “I think that these young artists have their finger on the pulse of what is going on and the way that people are speaking about certain things. So, in that, I think that this exhibition really highlights the difficulty that everybody was experiencing during the pandemic. In that sense, I think that it reaches many audiences and their individual stories are also quite beautiful.”
WHAT: “Home: Reimagining Interiority”
WHEN: On view by appointment through Monday, Aug. 1.
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami marks its 30th anniversary with “Anchors of Light,” a guest-curated exhibition revisiting key works from its collection and Miami art history.
Recent Comments