Basim Magdy, The Space Discotheque is an Underground Liberation Army, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Gypsum Gallery.
Payal Uttam
Take a deep dive into Art Basel Miami Beach’s most experimental sectors.
Some of today’s most compelling artistic voices can be heard at this year’s show – look out for these presentations in Nova and Meridians.
Tapping into the zeitgeist of our times, the artists on view at Art Basel in Miami Beach are tackling hot-button topics, from the climate emergency to colorism. From solo booths featuring young trailblazers to fantastical large-scale installations, keep an eye out for the following presentations in the Nova and Meridians sectors.
Filled with artwork straight from artists’ studios, the Nova sector has always been a place for exciting new discoveries. Cairo- and Basel-based Egyptian artist Basim Magdy will take over Gypsum Gallery’s booth with a series of psychedelic paintings. Using spray paint and oils, he creates poetic images that conflate fantasy and reality. Drawing from a multitude of sources, including botany, zoology, politics, and science fiction, his iridescent images capture beguiling narrative scenes that appear at once futuristic and ancient.
Unlike your average, white-walled booth, London-based gallery Edel Assanti will erect a series of industrial steel rebar structures upon which will hang French artist Noémie Goudal’s work. Her trompe l’oeil jungle images reflect on our relationship with the earth. Goudal collaged life-size strips of photographs of a rare palm frond found in South America and western Africa, and then photographed the assemblage in situ. Creating an optical illusion and a doctored version of reality, she questions our perceptions and the medium of photography as a truth-teller. She also addresses broader concerns of paleoclimatology and the state of the post-Anthropocene world.
Meanwhile, at Bogotá gallery Instituto de Vision’s booth, viewers are confronted with arresting wall reliefs of female genitalia by Mexico City-based artist Aurora Pellizzi. Working with a cooperative of women embroiderers from the indigenous Otomí community in Temoaya, Mexico, she creates thick wool tapestries in which she transforms female nude into sensual abstract shapes evoking colorful landscapes.
Finally, London-based galleries Arcadia Missa and Soft Opening have joined forces to present work by multidisciplinary artists Rhea Dillion and Phoebe Collings-James as well as London-based photographer Rene Matić. Seen together, their works unpack issues of identity, hybridity and belonging. Dillon’s practice references material and colonial histories, theories of minimalism and abstraction, and Black feminist epistemologies. Collings-James’ striking ceramics include a torso cast from a mannequin that evokes a shamanistic mask or a Roman armor plate adorned with nipples. Meanwhile, Matić’s diaristic photography offers a glimpse into their community and lived experience as a queer person from the Black British diaspora.
After meandering through a maze of tightly packed booths, stepping into the airy Meridians sector – which is dominated by large-scale projects pushing the boundaries of the traditional art fair layout – feels like a breath of fresh air.
Osaka-born artist Masako Miki plunges viewers into a fantastical world populated with candy-colored creatures made of felted wool presented by Ryan Lee and Cult Aimee Friberg. Inspired by the Shinto concept of tsukumogami yōkai – forgotten household objects that turn into shape-shifting supernatural spirits – her sculptures draw from memories of childhood play and ancient spirituality. These soft forms create a welcoming environment that invites us to reflect on ideals of multiculturalism and the idea of possessing multiple identities.
In contrast, Libyan Yurok artist Saif Azzuz deliberately bars entry to his installation Private Collection (2023), presented by Nicelle Beauchene Gallery. Forcing viewers to take on the role of unwelcome guests or even trespassers, he has created an enclosed yard-like area that is fenced off with vibrantly painted cedar panels. Paintings hang on the interior walls of the fence, while sculptures sit in the center of the space. Viewers can snatch glances of the art by peeping through holes in the fencing, raising questions around privilege, access to land, settler colonialism, and Indigenous resilience.
Presented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York-based artist Ja’Tovia Gary’s electrifying video work Quiet as It’s Kept (2023) interrogates ideas of desirability, colorism, and double-consciousness in her community. A contemporary response to Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye, it is composed of spliced-together footage, including viral TikTok videos, interviews with Morrison, and clips of Haitian American dancer Bianca Melidor. Gary has described her work as exploring ‘the Black interior,’ what is transpiring within the Black community as well as inside the mind of the Black individual.
At once beautiful and horrifying, Jamaican-born artist Ebony G. 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) confronts ideas of injustice. On a wall spanning about 18.3 meters in length, she has hung five large box frames, each festooned with fake flora. Amid the tangle of vivid plants, she inserts insects as well as faces, arms, legs, and headless torsos of disembodied Black women in a disturbing choreography of violence.
This article was originally published in the Art Basel Miami Beach magazine 2023.
Published on November 21, 2023.
Captions for full-bleed images, from top to bottom: 1. Noémie Goudal, Phoenix V (detail), 2021. Photograph by Will Amlot. Courtesy of the artist and Edel Assanti. 2. Installation view of Ja’Tovia Gary’s Quiet as it’s kept (2023) in ‘Ja’Tovia Gary: You Smell Like Outside…’, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, 2023. © Ja’Tovia Gary. Courtesy of Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Photograph by Steven Probert.
Source: https://www.artbasel.com/
