Art Basel Miami Beach 2023 on the ‘American melting pot’ and its social and cultural themes – a fair with exhibitions on gender, races, sexual liberation, feminism
Art Basel, international art fair – the American edition taking place in Miami Beach in December 2023
International contemporary art fair Art Basel is getting ready to kick off its 2023 American edition in Miami Beach. The fair, whose Global Lead Partner is UBS, will take place at the Miami Beach Convention Center (MBCC) from December 8 to 10, with Preview Days on December 6 and 7.
This year, Art Basel will welcome in Miami over two hundred seventy international galleries, with twenty-five newcomers joining the fair’s veteran exhibitors, two-thirds of which hail from North and Latin America. It will also cooperate with institutions, private collections, and cultural partners to reach beyond the fair halls. As a result, an expanded program of exhibitions and events will take over Miami Beach during the fair week.
Vincenzo de Bellis celebrates Miami Beach as nexus of North and Latin America: the director of Art Basel Miami 2023
Director of the fair this year is Italian curator Vincenzo de Bellis, who gives some highlights of the upcoming Miami Beach fair: «We welcome the artworld back to Art Basel Miami Beach this year with curated sectors and programming as ambitious as ever. Meridians will host nineteen projects that go beyond the traditional art fair format to explore how we engage with our shifting natural and cultural environments. Our Kabinett sector will return with several first-time exhibitors, and our Conversations program will celebrate Miami Beach as the geographic and creative nexus of North and Latin America. Outside the halls, a truly exceptional cultural program will unfold at Miami Beach’s institutions and private collections, from Hernan Bas, Anne Duk Hee Jordan, and Etel Adnan at The Bass, to Charles Gaines and Tau Lewis at ICA Miami, to Gary Simmons at PAMM».
American gallerist Bridget Finn has recently been appointed Director of Art Basel Miami Beach, starting from 2024.
Meridians questions visitors on how we collectively inhabit our planet: works of art «that speak to nature» at Art Basel
Meridians is a sector that aims at transcending the traditional art fair booth by inviting exhibitors to showcase monumental works, either historical or contemporary. The upcoming edition will feature nineteen projects, including new and site-specific works.
This year the focus will be on new perspectives, and visitors will be encouraged to reflect on how we collectively inhabit our planet. For the fourth year in a row Meridians will be curated by Magalí Arriola, Mexico City-based curator and Director of Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo: «We will bring together works that speak to nature, to the land, and to various cultural and spiritual geographies in a world of changing boundaries and shifting identities».
Art Basel Miami fair on sustainability, colonialism, politics: the 2023 artists and galleries
For the occasion, American artist Ja’Tovia Gary created a new installation featuring a twenty-six-minute film
composed of vintage Hollywood imagery, direct animation, original super8 footage, and documentary elements, as well as a recreated domestic environment. Inspired by Toni Morrison’s seminal 1970 novel The Bluest Eye, Gary’s work will be presented by Paula Cooper Gallery.
New is also the sculptural installation Bay Area-artist Saif Azzuz will exhibit in collaboration with Nicelle
Beauchene Gallery. A painted fence yard to probe questions of access, the privatization of land, settler colonialism, and indigenous resilience.
Almine Rech will present Gilt, a suite composed of four sculptures realized in 2022 by Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke for The Met’s historic façade niches. Standing in the form of trophies and referencing works of art in the museum’s collection, the sculptures reflect on the exercise and representation of power.
Argentinean artist and human rights activist Marcelo Brodsky, together with Rolf Art, will showcase a series of archival images depicting global public and political manifestations from 1968.
Presented by Spinello Projects, Miami-based artist Reginald O’Neal will debut his first sculptural installation, entitled The Cellist. This will consist in a ten-foot-tall reproduction of a small jazz cellist figurine located in an environment which replicates scenes from the artist’s Entertainer painting series.
An inclusive art fair. Kabinett: art-historical and solo showcases through the fair booths – America’s cultural heritage and materiality
A mainstay section of the Miami Beach show, Kabinett features art-historical and solo showcases. This year, the sector will include twenty-eight curated installations presented within exhibitors’ main booths. These will lead visitors through a journey across the Americas and their cultural heritage.
Canada will present a site-specific installation of new sculptures and drawings by New York-based artist Elisabeth Kley. She is renowned for her black and white ceramic sculptures, vessels, drawings, and paintings inspired by modernist theater sets and costume designs.
Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick will showcase a series of new paintings. Presented by Hales, these overlay vistas of rural American landscapes with the designs of the Native American people who inhabited them.
Not just North but also South America will be given voice in the Kabinett sector. An example is Brazilian artist Sallisa Rosa, presented by A Gentil Carioca. With works in ceramics and watercolors, realized especially for the fair, she will provide evidence of her ongoing investigations into memory through materiality.
Art Basel Miami for the ‘American melting pot’ and its social themes – an exhibition on genders, races, sexual liberation, feminism
A leap into American melting pot is also proposed by American artist Kandis Williams, in cooperation with Morán Morán. Through theatrical and cinematic portrayals of Black female characters he will test the limits of racial and gendered tropes.
This year Kabinett will also see the first-ever solo show in the in the United States of British painter and former punk band manager Caroline Coon. Inspired by feminism and the politics of sexual liberation, her art contests binary notions of gender and oppressive patriarchal values. Stephen Friedman Gallery will present a selection from her ongoing ‘beach series’ paintings.
Galleries at Art Basel Miami Beach
Earlier this year Art Basel unveiled four additional sectors for its Miami Beach fair. Galleries will be dedicated to international established galleries, which will showcase the full breadth of their program, featuring both historic and new artworks.
For instance, Galerie Minsky from Paris and Weinstein Gallery from San Francisco will jointly present pieces from Argentinian-Italian surrealist Leonor Fini’s personal collection, which have never been exposed to the public before. Los Angeles Parrasch Heijnen Gallery and New York Franklin Parrasch Gallery will also partner to homage Brockman Gallery, the first major contemporary gallery run by and for Black artists. For the occasion, they will work together with Alonzo Davis, one of Brockman’s founders.
Nova, Positions and Survey: four additional sectors at Art Basel Miami Beach
Nova will feature galleries presenting new works by up to three artists, such as The Ranch, presenting never-before-exhibited sculptures by Puerto Rican artist Daniel Lind-Ramos, or Gypsum Gallery, showcasing new paintings by Egyptian artist Basim Magdy.
Positions will give space to solo shows by emerging artists. Brazilian gallery Galatea will exhibit a photo series taken in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas by Allan Weber. Dürst Britt & Mayhew will be the first Dutch gallery to participate in the Miami Beach fair, featuring work hand-carved on native wood by Mexican artist Alejandra Venegas.
As for Survey, this sector will include galleries exhibiting artistic practices of historical relevance. Freight+Volume will curate a solo show by American artist and activist Karen Finley, dealing with her seminal 1977 interactive installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, during a protracted legal battle with the National Endowment for the Arts. Also dating back to the Seventies are American artist Vivian Browne’s Africa Series paintings, which will be presented by Ryan Lee.
Miami as a gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean – Conversations, curated by Emily Butler: keeping up the concept of inclusive art fair (Afro-Latino, Latino, and feminist histories)
As always, the fair program will be flanked by Conversations, a series of debates free and open to the public, with a live streaming on Art Basel’s Facebook page. Curated by Emily Butler, the project will run from December 7 to 9 and will feature thirty-five thought leaders from all over the world. Butler will bring them together across nine panels celebrating Latin America and providing insights into the evolving global art scene. She derived inspiration from the position of the city of Miami, which acts as a gateway to Latin America and the Caribbean. Her intent is to honor Afro-Latino, Latino, and feminist histories, the artistic ecologies of Florida, and other topical issues in 2023.
One of the panels will be Premiere Artist Talk, featuring a tribute to the practice of María Magdalena
Campos-Pons, from her youth in Cuba to her retrospective on tour in the United States, presently on view at The Brooklyn Museum. The artist will discuss with Franklin Sirmans, Director of Pérez Art Museum Miami, and Crystal Williams, President of Rhode Island School of Design.
Other panels include Collecting in Brazil, for a look at the current state of the art market in Latin America; Artist-Led Residencies in Florida; From Supercontinents to Florida: Artists on Climate Change; Biohacking Creativity; and Found in Translation.
Art Basel Miami Beach
Miami Beach is one of the locations of the Art Basel’s international contemporary art fairs, together with Basel, Hong Kong, and Paris. The 2023 edition of the fair is going to take place from December 8 to 10 at the Miami Beach Convention Center (MBCC).
The fair will be divided into six sectors, with a variety of international galleries exhibiting artworks by masters of modern and contemporary art as well as emerging talents. Each sector will have its own focus, ranging from monumental installations to solo shows dealing with contemporary topical issues. The fair program will be flanked by Conversations, a debate format, and a series of collateral exhibitions and events across the city of Miami.
