IMAGINING ISLANDS: MIAMI ART WEEK 2023
Fire at the core
Necklace of ash, stone, coral.
Islands emerge, submerge or shift
with continental drift. Islands
are not immortal. Without you,
islands could never be. You
are the portal. Islands are born
from your longings.
See how easy:
The spoon stirs up the void
Seabird drops its egg
A sand-grain launches itself
You blow breath on the ocean
Something breaks out on the face of the water
The Birth of Islands, Olive Senior
Amidst the hurl of bodies barreling through the Miami Beach Convention Center in early December, Calypso called out. Rendered in pieced and pattered fabric, the dominating figure of the goddess cradled a small and seemingly broken body. That would be Odysseus, a gallery representative offered. I had set out for Antillean waters and somehow found myself drifting along an ancient Aegean Sea. Breaking our silence, the representative pressed, was there something in particular I was looking for?
Christopher Myers, The Comfort of Calypso (what does comfort look like, the parks of queens), 2023. Appliqué textile. Courtesy James Cohan Gallery.
I had arrived at Art Basel with only 90 minutes to cover 500,000 square feet of exhibition space. Navigating one of the country’s premier art fairs is always a test of endurance and strategy. Armed with a large folding map of the Convention Center, I had already marked the locations of the handful of artists and galleries I had planned to see. Artists of the Caribbean, to be more specific, and the galleries that represented them. I was on what had appeared to be the most efficient route when the image of Calypso breached the horizon. The appliquéd textile had immediately registered as tropical in the way that tropicalia exists for and in the tourist imagination. What took seconds longer to absorb was the realization that in this work, I too, had created a fiction of paradise found. I wondered whether, in selecting the piece and in its prominent position, the gallery had imagined the effect.
In September 2023, months before its opening, Art Basel Miami had announced that it aimed to shine a spotlight on Latin America and Caribbean art. The roll-out had included a discourse on the well-worn trope of paradise, both in its usefulness and unreliability. An on-site conversation with recent MacArthur Fellow, the Cuban-born artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons was to be a highlight of a days-long series of events. While I was curious about whether the focus on Latin America and the Caribbean was a response to a receptive market or simply a nod to the city of MIami, I was even equally interested in what this might look like in reality. On the fair floor itself, the high-visibility meridian area would also included monumental works by Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson and the Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke, both of whom had long had a presence at Art Basel in previous years. In truth, the presence of Caribbean artists in the market is neither novel nor rare. A 2021 review of Armory by Suzie Wong, for example, offers a comprehensive look into the range and number of Caribbean artists active across the diaspora.
Ebony G. Patterson, ...and the dew cracks the earth, in five acts of lamentation...between the cuts...beneath the leaves...below the soil..., 2020. Image Courtesy Monique Meloche Gallery
I had begun the day with Patterson’s monumental installation (shown by Monique Meloche Gallery) ... and the dew cracks the earth, in five acts of lamentation...between the cuts... beneath the leaves...below the soil...,2020, described as “beautiful and horrifying”; is a sensuous collage of violence. On a wall 60 feet across, Patterson’s five large box frames is a wild tangle of flora, fauna and dismembered female bodies. From a distance, the collection a furious abstraction. Up close, the scene is seductive, lush and grotesque. Appropriately disturbed, I decide to stay here longer that I can afford before moving on with my plotted route.
Ebony G. Patterson, ...and the dew cracks the earth, in five acts of lamentation...between the cuts...beneath the leaves...below the soil... (Panel Details), 2020.
On the margins of the meridian area I finally find Hew Locke’s ,Gilt, originally commissioned for The Met’s historic facade. Cast in fiberglass and painted gold, the four trophies had been inspired by objects in The Met collection; objects of power, demonstrating power. I am most taken with the bases, each the ravenous and gaping mouth of the sea monster from Domenico Guidi’s Andromeda and the Sea Monster (1694) perhaps capturing the themes of consumption, excess and artifice that Art Basel, and the many satellite fairs that make up Miami Art Week often evokes.
Hew Locke, Gilt: Trophy 1, 2, 3 & 4” (2022) Metropolitan Museum of Art.
At the close of Miami Art Week, galleries and fairs began to tally their sales. The market, for all of the efforts to spotlight Latin American and Caribbean art, would have the final say. Lehmann Maupin, who represents Cuban American artist Teresita Fernández, (featured in the Art Basel essay on paradise) reported sales of two of the artist’s works for a combined total of $1 million. The solid charcoal-and-mixed media aluminum panels - Dark Earth(Reservoir) (2023) and Dark Earth(Cosmos) (2019), were part of the artist’s larger interest in “an expansive rethinking of what constitutes landscape.
Firelei Báez’s Untitled (Southern Building) (2023). Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
Major gallery Hauser & Wirth would also report a significant sale, with Firelei Báez’s Untitled (Southern Building) (2023) being acquired for $495,000. David Zwirner’s notable sales included Chris Ofili for $700,000 and Spinello Projects sold out its solo booth of Puerto Rican artist Esaí Alfredo within the first 90 minutes of opening day. Prices for Alfredo’s work ranged from $11,000–$35,000. Further north along the beach, at the Untitled Fair, works by Guyanese artist Suchitra Mattai of K Contemporary were acquired through the 21c Museum Hotels Acquisition Prize.
An extensive listing of sales at Art Basel is available here
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An extensive listing of sales at Art Basel is available here *
Pictures below include work from Art Basel as well as Untitled Art Fair
Naudline Pierre. Transform Me Here, 2023. James Cohan Gallery
cover image: Suchitra Mattai. Silent Retreat (Detail), 2023. K Contemporary