10 Must-See Gallery and Museum Shows during Miami Art Week
Installation view, Didier William, “Nou Kite Tout Sa Dèyè” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. Photo by Michael Lopez. Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami.
After a highly successful run last year for the first time since the pandemic began, Miami Art Week 2022 promises to be as busy as ever.
With multiple massive fairs—from Art Basel and Untitled Art to SCOPE and PRIZM Art Fair, not to mention Aqua Art and Art Miami—happening at the same time and gathering thousands of attendees, visitors are bound to need a bit of respite from the hustle and bustle. And exploring some of the city’s finest galleries and institutions is the perfect way to get off the beaten path.
Featuring exhibitions at well-established museums and beloved local galleries alike, the roundup below is your cheat sheet to the must-see gallery and museum shows on view during Miami Art Week.
Leandro Erlich, “Liminal”
Pérez Art Museum Miami
Nov. 29, 2022–Sept. 4, 2023
Leandro Erlich. Swimming Pool, 1999. Installation view: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, 2004. Photo: © Noriko Inomoto.
The first monographic survey of Argentine artist Leandro Erlich in North America, “Liminal,” at Pérez Art Museum Miami, is an immersive exhibition that will present 16 works created by the critically acclaimed artist over more than 20 years of his fruitful career.
Erlich is especially lauded for his amusing sculptures and large-scale installations that play with perceptions of reality. “Liminal,” which will run well into 2023, spotlights a series of pieces selected by New York–based guest curator Dan Cameron, organized as a succession of spaces that anyone could potentially encounter on any given day, such as subways, sidewalks, swimming pools, or a neighbor’s window.
Every artwork is meant to create a simulation of the space it represents, intended to incite a surprising illusion for viewers. As the exhibition’s title suggests, Erlich’s works invite spectators to become acutely aware of the state between reality and reverie.
Anastasia Samoylova, “Floridas”
Dot Fiftyone Gallery
Nov. 18, 2022–Jan. 20, 2023
At Dot Fiftyone Gallery in Miami, “Floridas” highlights a unique selection of works from the eponymous series by Miami-based Russian American artist Anastasia Samoylova.
To produce her striking photographs featuring bubblegum-pink buildings, captivating waterways, and elusive shadows—among many other motifs—Samoylova travels through Florida from north to south, exploring issues of geography, consumerism, and environmentalism, and capturing spellbinding moments in remote and unexpected corners of the southern state.
While “Floridas” surveys the myriad facets of this contradictory and often misunderstood state, the ongoing series also views Florida as a microcosm that represents broader issues across the United States. The images reflect on topics including political divisions and the difficulties surrounding the quintessential and questionable American Dream. “I believe that what is happening in the extremes of Florida is happening across the country,” Samoylova has said.
Didier William, “Nou Kite Tout Sa Dèyè”
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
Nov. 2, 2022–Apr. 16, 2023
Installation view, Didier William, “Nou Kite Tout Sa Dèyè” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. Photo by Michael Lopez. Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami.
The largest retrospective of Didier William’s work to date, “Nou Kite Tout Sa Dèyè” (Haitian Creole for “We’ve left that all behind”) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, presents more than 40 works across various media by the Haitian-born artist, while providing a comprehensive examination of his life and career. This extensive reflection on William’s past fittingly takes place in North Miami, the very neighborhood where he was raised.
Melding biographical details, personal musings, and historical events, the exhibition includes the artist’s stunning, well-known paintings carved on wood panels, alongside a series of works on paper and artist books. For a unique series of works in the show, William recontextualizes fragments of art history, stripping them of preconceptions and reintroducing them in a completely new and intimate light. This show also includes the artist’s first large sculpture, a 12-foot-tall wooden structure emulating the religious columns that are often used in Haitian rituals.
Nadia Ayari, “Eyelash in the Unknown”
Nina Johnson
Nov. 28, 2022–Jan. 7, 2023
Echoing the words of American poet Daniel Feinberg, “Eyelash in the Unknown” at Nina Johnson will spotlight a series of new, narrative-driven pieces by notable Tunisian-raised and Brooklyn-based artist Nadia Ayari.
This show is set to feature Ayari’s unique, intricate paintings, which depict natural forms such as florals, leaves, and branches. The artist often uses a lively palette and applies oil paint in a rich, dense manner that lends the work distinctive sculptural and vivacious characteristics.
For the first time, Ayari will exhibit a series of clear cast-glass sculptures, created with the help of 3D printing, which mirror essential details of her well-known paintings. “Eyelash in the Unknown” will also be the first occasion in which the artist will present works using the color orange, an expressive hue that promises to further energize Ayari’s works in a show she herself describes as a “love letter to Miami.”
Nina Chanel Abney, “Big Butch Energy”
Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
Nov. 28, 2022–Mar. 12, 2023
Nina Chanel Abney, Mama Gotta Have A Life Too, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Pace Prints.
For “Big Butch Energy,” Nina Chanel Abney’s upcoming show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, the lauded American artist surveys ideas of gender perception and performance. The show features a series of her signature large-scale graphic paintings and sculptures featuring cubic forms and characters in attention-grabbing hues.
In particular, the New York–based artist draws on elements of Baroque portraiture and fraternity culture to explore racial norms and sexuality in the United States. Moreover, in line with previous exhibitions in which Abney has questioned traditional gender norms, “Big Butch Energy” seeks to honor the Black masculine woman, hence the title.
Speaking about her vision for this show, Abney said, “Instead of just rewriting Greek life narratives with queer Black characters, I wanted to highlight the implicit flamboyance and homoeroticism of frat house and sorority house environments.”
Emerson Dorsch presents a solo exhibition by mixed-media American artist Paula Wilson focused on issues of fragmentation and regeneration. The show is titled “Be Wild. Bewilder” after a line in “Ghost Choir,” a poem that American writer Carl Phillips is said to have composed of multiple fragments he never used in other works.
The show makes use of elements collected by Wilson over the years, including scraps of fabric, pieces of paintings, rocks, plastic bottles, and CDs. The artist, who is based in Carrizozo, New Mexico, maintains a practice that is deeply informed by her intimate connection to the desert landscape she calls home. Wilson has created a series of hybrid works that combine sculpture, installation, painting, and printmaking, and convey rich narratives that delve into themes of feminine power, natural life systems, artmaking, and cross-cultural connections.
Jamilah Sabur, “The Harvesters”
The Bass
Oct. 13, 2022–Apr. 30, 2023
Installation view, Jamilah Sabur, “The Harvesters,” at The Bass. Photo by Zaire Aranguren. Courtesy of The Bass.
“The Harvesters,” at The Bass in Miami Beach, is a solo show by Jamaican-born artist Jamilah Sabur that presents a series of works across media, surveying issues of labor, climate change, and geology. In particular, the featured works consider lasting changes in temperature and weather as they relate to geological cycles and economies.
The title of the exhibition alludes to a 1565 artwork by Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which depicts people harvesting wheat alongside a youth sports game and a bay riddled with ships. This work made a great impression on Sabur, who was particularly drawn to it as a unique representation of late summer’s heat. To create many of the pieces in this show, the Brussels-based artist turned to the aforementioned painting while also considering the unparalleled energy shortages and heat waves currently happening across the planet.
Alexandre Diop, “Back to Basics”
Spinello Projects
Nov. 28, 2022–Jan. 14, 2023
At Spinello Projects, rising Franco-Senegalese artist Alexandre Diop will unveil his Miami gallery debut. With a series of never-before-seen works that meld abstraction and figuration, “Back to Basics” looks at the city of Berlin—the origin of the young artist’s widely celebrated practice—to observe and reflect on his rapidly evolving artistic trajectory.
The show calls attention to a unique selection of Diop’s signature works that blend painting and sculpture, while drawing on everyday objects such as metal, wood, textile, latex, paper, leather, rope, nails, plaster, car parts, and books. The Spinello Projects show will run simultaneously with Diop’s solo presentation at Miami’s Rubell Museum, where he recently completed the esteemed institution’s 2022 artist-in-residence program.
Ronny Quevedo, “ule ole allez”
Locust Projects
Nov. 23, 2022–Feb. 4, 2023
Ronny Quevedo, no hay medio tiempo (after Glissant and Quevedo), 2019. Courtesy the artist and Alexander Gray Associates, New York.
On view at Locust Projects, a renowned alternative art space in Miami, “ule ole allez” is a large-scale installation by Ecuadorian-born artist Ronny Quevedo that focuses on fostering a sense of play and community. Inspired by Miami’s Latinx soccer and futsal scene, the project employs sports as a metaphor for themes of survival and adaptation as they relate to the migrant experience.
Set to be Quevedo’s first solo show in Miami, “ule ole allez” was conceived as a collaborative art project for which the artist invited local community-based soccer and futsal teams to take part. The participating teams played public matches on fields that Quevedo covered with canvas and paper to collect traces from the players’ movements during the game. These mediums were then used by the Queens-based artist to create a massive installation at the Locust Projects space.
“Miami is Not the Caribbean. Yet it Feels Like it.”
Oolite Arts
Oct. 20–Dec. 11
Installation view of works by Bony Ramirez and Kim Dacres in “Miami is Not the Caribbean. Yet it Feels Like it.” at Oolite Arts. Photo by Diana Espin. Courtesy of Oolite Arts.
Conceived by Dominican-born, New York–based curator Danny Baez, “Miami is Not the Caribbean. Yet it Feels Like it” is a group show at Oolite Arts in Miami Beach, bringing together a wide selection of artists with Caribbean heritage to reflect on Caribbean culture in Miami. For the show, Baez asked artists to consider their personal feelings towards the coastal American city that geographically sits on the Caribbean’s northern border.
The featured works, spanning multiple mediums, were created by Miami- and New York–based artists such as Destiny Belgrave, Kim Dacres, Mark Fleuridor, Amanda Linares, Jeffrey Meris, Na’Ye Perez, Monica Sorelle, Bony Ramirez, and Cyle Warner. Participating artists were asked to consider if and how Miami—as the home to the most Caribbean migrants in the United States, with Haitian, Puerto Rican, and Cuban neighborhoods, among many others—effectively reflects Caribbean culture.
