A giant alien tongue, NFT eyeballs and Thigh Snack: Miami Art Week’s must-see art

In this nonstop and glorious week of so much art, no one — or three or five — can see it all. Here’s our guide to some of the most memorable art on view. All disappear within days; catch it while you can!

Here is how to find all the fairs:

ART BASEL

ENDLESS STAIR

James Cohan, Meridians Section, M15

Yinka Shonibare’s “Moving Up” features three life-size figures — a representation of the six million African Americans who fled the South between 1916 through 1970 during what is known as The Great Migration. Dressed in Dutch-design Indonesian batik cloth, they climb the stairs to the North (and Midwest) hauling their worldly possessions in net bags.

SIGN OF THE TIMES

Paula Cooper, booth G6

Making sense of the references in Ja’Tovia Gary’s thought-provoking 2021 “Situational Ethics” requires context: The sculpture is a reproduction of the neon sign at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. The sign lettering quotes dialogue from “Beloved,” the classic 1987 novel by Nobel Prize-winning American author Toni Morrison set in the post-Civil War years. The words are spoken by a Black woman on her deathbed as she laments the miseries she has experienced.

LIFE IS A CIRCUS

Wilding Cran Gallery, booth P15

One of today’s most evocative artists is Karon Davis, whose plaster figures can be seen at the Rubell Museum and at several Art Basel booths. Wilding Cran has devoted its space in the Positions sector to a solo exhibition: a circus tent dominated by a clown with knives her back. Perhaps a little too familiar for some.

RECHARGED

Yancey Richardson, Nova Section, N23

Works by South African visual activist and photographer Zanele Muholi have been featured in many museums, including London’s Tate Gallery and our own Pérez Art Museum Miami. Current work includes a bronze bust in the artist’s image, with a crown of jumper cables clamped to their hair. “It’s about recharging,” Richardson said. “The jumper cables on their head deals with creative and spiritual recharging. The work also references load shedding, where the electrical grid goes dark during certain periods of the day because the system in certain South African townships is overtaxed, Richardson explained.

ART MIAMI

Patria Y Vida

Cernuda Arte, Booth AM315

Cuban artist Vicente Hernandez, who still lives on the island, has blended politics and painting before. In a new, hot-off-the presses work, “The Demonstration,” he captures the passionate protests of July 2021 in Cuba, which inspired the “Patria Y Vida” movement.

COLOR AND LIGHT

Galeries Bartoux, booth AM317

This unique showing of 23 works by Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez marks the first appearance by Galeries Bartoux at Art Miami, and the collection is stunning — and a great way to examine the range of Cruz-Diez, considered one of the great thinkers in the realm of color and chromatic phenomena in art. The pieces, from the Paris studio of Cruz-Diez, are some of the last works he did before his death in 2019.

BOTERO FOREVER

Art of the World Gallery, booth AM327

“The Street,” a four-panel oil on canvas depicting four elegant figures walking on the street is Colombian artist Fernando Botero’s largest painting and is considered one of his most important pieces. Art Miami director Nick Korniloff calls it a “rare, rare piece” and said of its value that “any collector of Latin American art would want that in his collection.”

BANKSY MANIA

Maddox Gallery, AM218

London-based Maddox Gallery sold “Charlie Brown” by street artist Banksy to an American collector at the VIP preview of Art Miami for a cool $4 million. But don’t worry; there are still other Bansky works to choose from, including “Keep It Real,” “Stretched Pulp Fiction,” and “Rat at Heart” — making this the largest exhibit of Banksy works from a single gallery at Art Miami. Prices run up to $5.6 million.

DESIGN MIAMI/

JUST SAY ‘AH’

Jason Jacques Gallery, Booth G05

The last word in isolation chambers just may be uttered from the giant mouth of the Gorgon. Nick Weddell provides a cocoon for people to lie atop the tongue of an alien creature from the imaginary world of Zeefromzeglop. The mouth comes complete with taste buds and rows of teeth line the interior roof. Dozens of eyes that rotate in their sockets sprout from the top of the sculptural furniture. “It’s oddly comfortable,” Weddell said. “I’m really happy in there.”

MORE AT DESIGN MIAMI/

NEW ART DEALERS ALLIANCE

A WELCOMING EMBRACE

Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, booth 9.02

In the tradition of 20 century great Romare Bearden, Texas native Evita Tezeno creates richly embellished collages depicting the same Black woman in a variety of situations, including the play of emotions she felt during the pandemic lock-down last year. Tezeno explores our limited lifespan, sheltering in place, and hopeful transformation. Collectors loved them; the booth quickly sold all her work.

ALL SEWED UP

Textile works and collages appear this year at several fairs. NADA is a great place to get a sense of what’s happening, from Christian Newby’s 26-foot-tall abstraction at the Patricia Fleming Gallery (P17) to portraits by Afghani artist Hangama Amiri at Towards gallery, booth 6.11 (shown above).

PINTA

WEAVING STREETS

Pinta Miami, Nohra Haime Gallery, Booth B6

“Dominga” is one of 42 stylized studio photographs of itinerant Black female street vendors in Cartagena, Colombia, displayed in a Rockefeller Foundation grant-winning installation “Tejiendo Calle” (Weaving Streets), by Ruby Rumié. Rumié, a native of the city, dressed each of the women in traditional white dresses and seated them formally against a neutral backdrop to reveal their individual features and identity. The palangueras, so called for the fruit-laden bowls they carry on their heads, are a disappearing tradition in Cartagena.

BRAZIL’S ARTISANAL SOUL

Looking for some visual or spiritual relief from the avalanche of bleeding-edge contemporary art this week? Make a beeline for the booth from the northeastern Brazilian state of Alagoas. It showcases often-dazzling, traditionally inspired work made by hand in wood, clay and other materials by 13 Alagoas artists and artisans, including the pottery figures above by Dona Ireneia. Also check out the incredibly detailed, life-size jackfruit rendered in clay by Adriana Siqueira.

SCOPE

INTO INFINITY

Now in its 20th year, Scope gives special attention to new media art. One seductive example is an installation by Mr. E, best known for his colorful riff on “Benny Jr.” (the U.S. $100 bill) and the phrase “Money isn’t real.” This new work, “100,” blends the physical with the metaverse; naturally an NFT is involved.

EYES HAVE IT

Hypercube.art, booth A.07

The fair isn’t dominated by NFTs, but there are plenty around. Among them: a series of 1,000 computer-generated eyes by Electralina called “Window to the Soul.” When minted next year, each “eye” will be available as a unique digital image limited to a edition of one.

UNTITLED

STITCHED

Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, both C10

Works by Black artists are finally beginning to get their due. There’s no better place to explore the range of work now available than UNTITLED. Among them are collages by Ghanian Rufai Zakari, who stitches together bits of plastic to create startling portraits.

SAY WHAT YOU MEAN

UNTITLED, TERN Gallery, A13

Bahamian artist April Bey’s work is a social critique of American and Bahamian culture. “What you Tryna Say, What You Tryna Say, Raise Your Phucking Voice, I Can Not Hear What You Say,” is a digitally woven blanket with hand-sewn sequins and glitter hangs from faux clothespins (harkening back to the artist’s childhood on Nassau). The words “Thigh Snacks” at the bottom reference a fictional girl band that thrives on a planet where glitter acts as capital.

NEW HERCULES

Afikaris, C55

Cameroonian artist Jean David Nikot’s “The New Hercules” series is easy to spot and hard to look away from. His hyperrealist portraits, set over maps, elevate the working class to the level of icons. His focus is displaying the strength and beauty of bodies, touching on the exploitation of human beings across the African continent.

MIAMI DESIGN DISTRICT

LABYRINTH

Miami Design District, Jungle Plaza

“Five Echoes” by artist Es Devlin is an immersive, multi-sensory experience that transforms the Jungle Plaza in the Miami Design District into a forest and a maze that is illuminated by light, color and sound. The interactive exhibit, presented by Chanel, is free and open to the public through Dec. 21, 2021.

MORE IN THE MOORE

4040 NE 2nd Ave.

Los Angeles curator Jeffrey Deitch presents his final show in the Moore Building, soon to become a boutique hotel. “Shattered Glass” tells an evocative story of strength by those often marginalized because of race, ethnicity and sexual identity through works such as Gabriel Sanchez’s “Babalao Pastor, Yoruba Priest.”

ELSEWHERE

GET DIGITAL

1212 Lincoln Road

NFTs — non-fungible tokens — have been the tip of every tongue this week, from dozens of conferences and panels to collectors asking “what are they, anyway?” The best and simplest answer to that question can be found at The Digital, an Art Week showcase of computer-generated artworks from the past 50 years, from holograms to video art. Show goers quickly discover that NFTs are simply digital artworks that have been authenticated by blockchain technology.

ON THE SAND

33rd Street and Collins Avenue on the beach.

The most spectacular example of digital art this week is displayed on a massive screen on the beach in front of the Faena Hotel. “Machine Hallucinations: Coral,” by Refik Anadol. The artist and his team culled more than 1.7 million publicly available images of coral and applied machine learning to create the display in this monumental site-specific installation, a collaboration between Aorist and Faena Arts.

Just a few yards south, don’t miss the Hall of Visions portal installation by Pilar Zeta, also a Faena project.

WARHOL IN CHINA

FIU Miami Beach Visual Arts Gallery, 1602A Washington Ave., Miami Beach

In 1982, curator Jeffrey Deitch organized a trip to China with Andy Warhol to paint portraits of China’s famous. But, recalls Lee Caplin, who was on the trip, Warhol “never had his 15 minutes of fame in China, because no one knew who he was.” A series of never-before-seen images from the trip by Christopher Makos are now on display at the Washington Street gallery of Florida International University, thanks in part to Caplin. Though the display comes down Dec. 11, it will live on in an augmented-reality film.

FLUSH YOUR WOES

Sir Thrifty Vintage Boutique at The Citadel, 8300 NE 2nd Ave.

One of the most eye-catching and affordable works of the week isn’t at a fair at all. Sara Molano’s rubber-ducky studded toilet costs $300 comes with a roll of paper and pens — so you can write down your troubles and send them away. Metaphorically speaking of course; it doesn’t function.

This story was originally published December 3, 2021 at 10:59 AM.

Jane Wooldridge

Miami Herald

Jane Wooldridge is a former journalist for the Miami Herald.