Art Week Miami Beach installation Doors to Freedom highlights persecuted artists

Dissident artists persecuted by authoritarian regimes joined leaders of human-rights organizations and elected officials on the beach Monday evening to unveil a public art installation dedicated to telling the story of artistic expression in the face of totalitarianism.

“Doors to Freedom,” a project by the Human Rights Foundation, Cuban Freedom March and City of Miami Beach, features the works of eight artists from around the world, including North Korea, Syria, Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela. The installation, at 4601 Collins Ave., will run until Dec. 7 as part of Art Week Miami Beach.

The works — replicas of drawings, images, etchings and sculptures — are revealed by opening doors to illuminated huts decorated with bold colors. The collective message, the host organizations say: “Art does not merely decorate — it testifies, disrupts, and demands. It reminds us that liberty is never guaranteed.”

“This installation strips away the idea that art is only ever a polite conversation,” Roberto González, chief advocacy officer of the Human Rights Foundation, said in a statement. “For these artists, their work is an alarm bell against tyranny, and their sacrifice demands our attention.”

The installation features works by:

• The Gao brothers, Chinese nationals whose politically charged art led to Gao Zhen’s imprisonment last year.

• Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, a performance artist and leader of the San Isidro Movement in Cuba who was imprisoned in 2021 by Cuban authorities.

• Rayma Suprani, a Venezuelan political cartoonist forced into exile. The installation features a cartoon critiquing Venezuela’s healthcare system that she says got her fired from her job.

• Song Byeok, a former North Korea propagandist who now critiques the nation’s dictatorship after fleeing his country.

• Azza Abo Rebieh, a Syrian artist whose works draw from her personal experience in the war-torn nation’s notorious prison system.

• Pedro X. Molina, a political cartoonist exiled from Nicaragua. His featured work, “Ortega,” critiques the country’s dictator.

• Zehra Doğan, a Kurdish artist and journalist sentenced to years in prison for her journalism and her art, including a piece depicting a Kurdish-majority town, Nusaybin, reduced to rubble by the Turkish military.