Today’s special edition of The New Tropic is curated by Commissioner, a local arts membership program bringing people together to collect art and support artists.
All About Intentionality.
Miami Art Week is one of the most exciting times of the year for art lovers in our city and worldwide. With so many events and exhibitions, deciding what to attend can be overwhelming. Here are some tips to help you navigate the week from guest editor Dainy Tapia, ArtSeen365 founder and curator.
- If you’re serious about participating in Miami Art Week events, dive in with a strategy. This guide will help.
- Team up with art buddies, but make sure you’re on the same wavelength.
- If you meet artists, ask open-ended questions about their materials, process, or inspiration, but not all at once — take the opportunity to schedule a future visit.
- Dress nice but comfortably, and stay fueled and hydrated.
- Give yourself permission to rest.
To read the full story about how the curator behind the 365-days-per-year art platform prepares for Miami Art Week, click here.
Producer/DJ duo Eddy Samy and Daygee Kwia of Paperwater invite you to listen all week long. Click here for the vibe.
This year’s ambitious guide includes 100+ listings, but we encourage you to prioritize the artists and projects that will delight, challenge, and inspire you. Unpopular opinion: do less. Take your time to see and feel. Experience public art. And, consider what supporting Miami’s arts and cultural community looks like for you.
Here’s a list of ephemeral and free things to do during Art Week and artists/organizers to keep up with year-round:
- AIM Biennial, curated by William Cordova, Gean Moreno, Mikhaile Solomon, and Marie Vickles, returns with 56 site-specific installations throughout South Florida. (Various Locations)
- Spaces of Influence immersive installations with Sebastian Errazuriz, and Miami darlings Kelly Breez and Liene Bosquê, at Faena. (Miami Beach)
- Making Miami with folks like FriendsWithYou, Carlos Betancourt, Loni Johnson, Antonia Wright + Ruben Millares, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, Kenny Scharf, Jen Stark, and Diaspora Vibe (DVCAI), Dimensions Variable, and Locust Projects, who lived and worked in the neighborhood between 1996-2012. Nearby, check out Kennedy Yanko’s monumental sculpture Soul Talk. (Miami Design District)
- Do your steps with guided public art walks with Dejha Carrington and On Running. (Miami Beach)
It wouldn’t be Miami Art Week without an art fair or two. Go to NADA Miami (Dec. 5–9) for gems like Bas Fisher Invitational, Dale Zine, KDR305, PRIMARY, YoungArts, and artist Paloma Izquierdo at HesseFlatow. Feria Clandestina (Dec. 7–9) at the 7 Seas Hotel in the Miami Modern District contrasts some of the tonier fairs with its imperfect charm — but that’s the fun, isn’t it?
After you’ve done the mainland, rideshare or moped to Art Basel Miami Beach, Design Miami, or Untitled Art. In addition to the performance installation PLAY, LAY, AYE: ACT 6 by GeoVanna Gonzalez, look out for Leo Casteñeda’s Embodiments, a ten-year survey of the artist’s practice, with Negron Pizzaro gallery at Untitled Art (Dec. 6–10). Drop by Art Basel Miami Beach (Dec. 8–10) for Jared McGriff with Vielmetter Los Angeles, Reginald O’Neal with Spinello Projects, and Anastasia Samoylova with Wentrup Gallery. Then, hop across the street for Design Miami’s fantastic talks program, with a powerful installation presented just inside the fair entrance by designer Nifemi Marcus-Bello.
📅 Get started this Sunday, December 3rd:
11 AM–4 PM | Progressive Art Brunch—gallery hop across neighborhoods with 15+ stops, including Emerson Dorsch, La Cometa, Mindy Solomon Gallery, and N’Namdi Contemporary
5–8 PM | Shadowboxing it: Painting Peripheries at Central Fine and George Clinton: Ruff at Jupiter Gallery in North Bay Village
⏰ Opening during Art Week, but on view for a while longer:
Through Dec. 27 | Woven Ecologies, curated by Cornelius Tulloch, at the thoughtfully artist-run space Tunnel
Through Jan. 14 | Laure Simmons: Autofiction in the magnificent Jewel Box at the YoungArts Campus
Through Jan. 22 | Gimme Shelter at The Historic Hampton House, featuring 25+ artists from the collection of Beth Rudy deWoody and satellite pop-up exhibits by local galleries
Through Feb. 4 | Bridge Deconstruction Site, by The Department of Reflection and misael soto at The Wolfsonian
Through March 17 | Juan Francisco Elso, Chris Friday, and Jamea Richmond-Edwards at Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
Through April 28 | Gary Simmons: Public Enemy at Pérez Art Museum Miami
💪🏾 Meet GeoVanna Gonzalez, the multidisciplinary artist exploring the notion of Taking Up Space
📸 Photo by Andrea Lorena
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Gonzalez is a Miami-based artist and has a studio at Bakehouse Art Complex. Her work aims to connect private and public spaces through interventionist, participatory art with an emphasis on collaboration and collectivity. This interview was conducted by independent curator Heike Dempster and edited for brevity.
Heike Dempster, curator: How would you describe your practice?
GeoVanna Gonzalez, artist: It’s a multidisciplinary practice. I work between creating spaces, installations, and functional sculptures, and incorporate performance into my work. A lot of the concepts that I work with are around gender and identity, and ideas around public and private space.
HD: Can you tell us about the performance you are planning for Untitled Art?
GG: PLAY, LAY, AYE: ACT 6 is part of an ongoing project that has different iterations. It’s made new each time but is forever going, evolving, and reshaping into something different. That’s why there are different acts.
Each time that I present the work, I create a new configuration for the modular sculptural pieces. It’s never presented the same way though it is often accompanied by a performance. For this project with Untitled Art, I’ll be working with movement artists Maria Burt and Alondra Balbuena, poet Arsimmer McCoy, and musician Claudens Louis. The overall theme is about how we navigate movement, and how that movement could be experienced through freedom and liberation or also be something that’s controlled. I’m working between that tension as well as thinking about the idea of what it means to be alive. So it’s like dealing both, with issues of loss and grief, but also joy.
The majority of the performers are women, and aligned with the theme for Untitled Art this year around gender and equity in the arts. My work naturally centers women and queer folks and people of color.
HD: Since we’re all excited to experience this performance, what is your hope for the audience?
GG: I want them to feel connected or like they can see themselves in the work in some way. I hope it provides a moment for reflection or contemplation about how they navigate spaces, and also about taking things for granted. Some people have a lot of access and some people don’t. Some people have to think about it and others not at all. Maybe it’s a conscious thought after this, something to consider. I hope there can be a moment in which the performance helps people to reflect even for a second on it. I feel really lucky that I can create this, and a lot of feedback I’ve received from previous performances is that people feel really connected to the work. For me, that’s a success.
Experience PLAY, LAY, AYE: ACT 6, a performance installation, next Friday, December 8 at 5 PM on the sands of Miami Beach at Untitled Art. Everyone is invited.
📸 Photo by Juan Matos
🤲🏾 A previous iteration of PLAY, LAY, AYE opened in September at the convening of Still Here: Generations of Black Miami Artmaking, organized by the Center of Global Black Studies at the University of Miami. Learn more about what it truly means to take up space and Black worldmaking in “Advocacy as Carework,” an op-ed by Dr. Donette Francis.
☝🏾 If you like this, check out: Blackhaven: Building Sacred Spaces, a panel discussion at New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA Art Fair), including Miami-based architect/designer Germane Barnes, hosted by TONE of Memphis, TN.
Prepared with care, this guide is the collective work of artists, arts workers, curators, galleries, educators, and art lovers around the country opening up their worlds and welcoming you to experience Miami Art Week.
Take it from legendary artist Ed Ruscha, “Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks.”
👉🏾 Explore the guide 👈🏾