Miami Art Week is around the corner, and the city is preparing to showcase all its artistic magic. From interactive exhibitions to sculptures, you are going to eat and sleep art. This year, many artists of color showcase their talent with unique exhibitions all over town. So if you are looking for diverse art to admire, below, find showstopping exhibitions by multiple Black and Hispanic artists outside of Miami Beach.
See Also: These Are Miami's Top 6 Cuisines According To A Skyscanner Study
2201 Collins Ave / Website
Visitors to the iconic W South Beach can witness a celebration of freedom and feminine power, led by W Hotels x Mambo Creatives, through the revered artist commissioned works on display: "Future Transmutation," an interactive sculptural garden installation by Pilar Zeta, and "An Amphibious Love Affair," a creative intervention by Miranda Makaroff celebrating freedom and self-discovery.
Future Transmutation is a path that acts as an altar for transformation into a new state. A violet metallic hue surrounds its symbolic private shapes and forms. The aesthetic and spatial compositions are rooted in ancient architecture and weave together several temporalities –past, present, and futures to come. A sundial connects the sun, the Earth, and the passage of time in the installation. It assists us in understanding the cycles, where we are now, and where we need to go. A sphere and a pyramid representing the fluid and structural alchemical state of matter will lead us into a portal, symbolizing our achievements and what it takes to lead us into our transformation. Two violet-flamed candles illuminate our transformation, and a screen with a hypnotic swirl transports us to a parallel universe.
919 NW 2nd Ave / Website
Claire Oliver Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in Central Harlem, is bringing LOOP, a block-wide art experience focused on art and culture in the heart of Miami's Overtown District, timed to coincide with Miami Art Week. LOOP extends beyond the gallery walls to create an ambitious and interdisciplinary showcase of the artists' work, centered around a 5,000 square foot gallery space showcase by Claire Oliver Gallery and featuring an exhibition of works by gallery artists Robert Peterson, Gio Swaby, Stan Squirewell, Simone Saunders, Lauren Fensterstock, Aaron Stephan, Barbara Earl Thomas, and Jeffrey Henson Scales. LOOP will feature large photography installations, a program of vocal and visual performances created by the collaboration between gallery artists and top musical, fashion, and dance artists, and a mission to give the gallery's artists "carte blanche." A hospitality program featuring minority-owned businesses will offer specialty food and beverages.
“Our mission for LOOP is to give our artists a wide berth to create impactful and ambitious work as an alternative to a confined booth during Miami Art Week,” states gallerist Claire Oliver. “Furthermore, it is essential for the work of Black and Brown artists to be shown in a Black and Brown neighborhood – a neighborhood that like our home base in Harlem is a vibrant mecca for cultural expression that we hope all of Miami Art Week will discover and revel in.”
Overtown was a thriving hub for Miami's Black community. Founded at the end of the nineteenth century, it is a former beacon of culture and economic prosperity that has been plagued by poverty in recent decades. Claire Oliver Gallery in Harlem aims to collaborate with Miami's cultural leaders, Overtown community stakeholders, and conscientious developers to provide a unique experience that complements the neighborhood's vibrant cultural heritage as the "Harlem of the South." The Southeast Overtown/Park West Community Redevelopment Agency and its director, James McQueen, make LOOP Overtown possible.
1 E Las Olas Blvd / Website
Kathia St. Hilaire, a South Florida artist, is having her first solo museum exhibition with St. Hilaire. These paintings depict tender images of family gatherings, children at play, celestial bodies, death scenes, and distinctive Haitian iconography. The ornate, textured surfaces on these images enhance her visual language. The exhibition addresses St. Hilaire's personal transcultural experience and material experimentation. Her interest in matter and process extends beyond a formal, visual concern, creating a space to address the concept of the painting's surface as it relates to the understanding of skin, color, and race. These critical ideas are central to the artist's practice and the larger Haitian story she wishes to tell.
1 E Las Olas Blvd / Website
Lux et Veritas digs into a transformative period in contemporary art by focusing on a generation of artists of color who studied at Yale School of Art between 2000 and 2010. The exhibition's title refers to Yale University's motto, Lux et Veritas, which translates to "Light and Truth" in Latin. The title of this exhibition refers to how these artists thought critically about their work and their movement through institutional structures. Lux et Veritas provides a public forum for these artists to address the directions they took due to graduate school explorations instilled in their practice. Mike Cloud, William Cordova, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Abigail DeVille, Torkwase Dyson, John Espinosa, Luis Gispert, Rashawn Griffin, Leslie Hewitt, Loren Holland, Titus Kaphar, Jamerry Kim, Eric N. Mack, Wardell Milan, Wangechi Mutu, Mamiko Otsubo, Ronny Qevedo, and others are among those featured.Mickalene Thomas, Anna Tsouhlarakis, Shoshanna Weinberger, and Kehinde Wiley.
2136 NW 1st Ave / Website
The Crown We Never Take Off, a larger-than-life immersive art activation centered on Riches, will be presented by Prime Video as a follow-up to the series' first screening at this year's CultureCon. Through photography, sculpture, painting, music, video, and performance art, the experience will celebrate elements from the show that exhibit freedom of expression and identity across the Black diasporic experience.
Guests within "The Crown We Never Take Off" exhibit space will see various art forms from artists such as Marryam Noma, Carlos Idun-Tawiah, Tammy Knight, and Morel Doucet that map back to the overlooked efforts of Black entrepreneurs and creatives who, like the Richards family, push boundaries and excel despite the odds. The exhibition will also include a DJ, performance, libations, passed trays, and an editorial-style photo op that will place guests as the 'Face of Flair & Glory,' a highly coveted honor within the series.
Riches follows the exploits of the Richards family, who are stylish, privileged, and highly successful. When Stephen Richards (Hugh Quarshie) dies unexpectedly, the family's world is turned upside down. His various sets of children are about to collide as they vie for control as his business hangs in the balance.
770 NE 125th St. / Website
Didier William: Nou Kite Tout Sa Dèyè opened on November 2, 2022, and is the largest retrospective of his career. The show, titled "We've Left That All Behind," takes an in-depth look at the Haitian-born, North Miami-raised artist's career, and memories in the neighborhood where he grew up. The exhibition, curated by Erica Moiah James, Ph.D., will include over forty works in various mediums, including some of his most recent paintings. New drawings and artist books complement the painted work and speak to William's close relationship between painting and printmaking in his practice. The exhibition also features William's first monumental sculpture, a 12-foot-tall wooden body resembling a religious column used in Haitian worship rituals.
Some of the works in the exhibition recontextualize historical iconographies and ideas, stripping them of their "known" truths and transforming each into something entirely new through a blend of personal reflections, biographical anecdotes, and art historical moments. By doing so, William reclaims autonomy over a fragmented history record, using his connection to the complexities of immigrant narratives and queer identity to create an opportunity for investigation and redemption.
"I want the audience to be involved in that complexity that sometimes resolves and sometimes does not," William explained. "For which there may be a translation at times and may not have a translation at other times." Those moments of failed translation are just as important and powerful for me."
770 NE 125th St. / Website
Kanaval, a retrospective by photographer, filmmaker, curator, and writer Leah Gordon that documents twenty years of Carnival in Haiti, will open on November 6, 2022. The exhibition, curated by MOCA Curator Adeze Wilford, consists of a series of black-and-white photographs taken on a mechanical medium format camera. The images are contextualized by a series of oral histories relayed by various troupe leaders who oversee costume design and generate Carnival narratives. Their stories reflect the abundance of invention, fable, and self-created mythology that characterizes much Haitian culture. A new feature-length documentary on the carnival will accompany the photographs, providing a kinetic counterpoint to the portraits.
"I'm thrilled to be bringing Kanaval to MOCA," said MOCA Curator Adeze Wilford. "Through her photographs, Leah has documented and helped to platform a people's history of Haiti for decades." This exhibition expands on that practice with her new film, which offers an incredible perspective on an ever-evolving intergenerational conversation about tradition."
770 NE 125th St. / Website
VantaBlack's To What Lengths opened on Oct. 14, and it was chosen as part of MOCA's 2022 Open Call for Artists for its "Art on the Plaza" series, highlighting a key component of VantaBlack's artistic practice by reflecting on legacy building and preservation as foundational to Black culture and other diasporic peoples. By activating five palm trees on the MOCA Plaza with large-scale braids adorned with beads, metal, artificial sunflowers and gardenias, the South Florida-based artist will investigate how ideas about legacy are woven into everyday actions. The braids on each tree will be styled after the women in VantaBlack's family.
"Hair grooming through various braiding techniques has been passed down through my family's matriarchs," VantaBlack explained. "It is a vehicle for oral history sharing, generational bonding, and a form of caregiving, among many other traditions." The positioning of one body between another creates a vulnerable space. This process creates and exchanges valuable memories while also developing a lifelong skill."
View this post on Instagram
Biscayne Bay & 14th St. / Website
A native of Detroit and a Baltimore resident, her sought-after drawings and paintings address race, inequity, economic deprivation, the mundane, and hysteria in America's socio political landscape. Se Jong Cho, a South Korean-American woman, is an environmental engineer and self-taught painter who believes in science's antithesis: art and creativity. She paints forms that provide intriguing entry points into the surreal, an art form equally concerned with reality (based on science) and the unconscious thoughts of the mind (where creativity exists).
View this post on Instagram
3155 Ponce De Leon / Website
Diago, a leading member of the contemporary Afro-Cuban movement, uses his provocative mixed media work to correct historical narratives by giving voice to the marginalized.
View this post on Instagram
Biscayne Bay & 14th St. / Website
The works of Jamaican-American artist Peter Wayne Lewis, the first Jamaican-American to introduce Jamaican-Asian aesthetics to China, will be displayed at John William Gallery.
View this post on Instagram
Biscayne Bay & 14th St. / Website
J.P. Goncalves' "Aging Out" series is on display at Connect Contemporary. Aging Out aims to visually capture the reality of a social injustice that often goes unnoticed. Viewers are invited to consider seven portraits, each of which depicts someone who, at the age of eighteen, has either "aged out" of foster care or would have "aged out" if a family had not gotten involved.
1101 NW 23rd St. / Website
In partnership with BMW i, Pulse Topology is an immersive biometric artwork consisting of 3,000 suspended light bulbs, each of which glimmers to the heartbeat of different participants. As visitors traverse a series of crests and valleys of pulsing lights at Superblue, sensors detect and record new heartbeats, which replace the oldest ones, creating a memento mori in which the trace of individual heartbeats gains poetic strength as a powerful choice of human connections. Lozano-Hemmer's studio will use the technology behind Pulse Topology to visualize heartbeats through light, sound, and graphics inside the first-ever fully-electric BMW i7 sedan, inspired by conversations with BMW engineers and designers and in the spirit of true cross-disciplinary collaboration.
140 NE 39th St. / Website
Germane Barnes, a Miami-based architect, and designer, has been awarded the 2022 Miami Design District Annual Design Commission. Rock | Roll is a multifaceted installation that honors the BIPOC communities that contribute to Miami's polyethnic culture by drawing on the vibrancy of Miami Carnival. Barnes created a series of massive, whimsical capsules that rock back and forth when users activate them and feature vibrant colors reminiscent of Carnival's feathered costumes and the city's water-friendly lifestyle. Barnes also designed wind chimes in the style of steel drums and Soca music, which will be hung in the trees throughout the neighborhood. Rock | Roll will also feature a free-floating dome suspended overhead and animated by light and sound as an anchor to a communal and lively commission. Barnes' creative – and massive – interactive installation, which will be installed in the Miami Design District as part of the annual Design Commission, is expected to draw visitors from all over the world.
35 NE 40 St. / Website
To coincide with his presentation at the Rubell Museum, which opens in December 2022, Saatchi Yates Miami will temporarily open a solo exhibition of new work by Contemporary Ethiopian artist Tesfaye Urgessa this month. Saatchi Yates Miami is located near the Institute of Contemporary Art and the de la Cruz Collection in the Miami Design District. Tesfaye was born in Ethiopia in 1983 and studied at the Staatlichen Akademie in Stuttgart under master Tadesse Mesfin before emigrating to work in Germany. Ugressa used these experiences to connect Ethiopian iconography and a deep fascination with traditional figurative painting to create a distinct and striking language that depicts race and identity politics.
4220 N Miami Ave / Website
This year, the neighborhood is thrilled to host its first-ever art fair aside from Design Miami/: Prizm 2022 Contemporary African Art Fair. Celebrating its 10th Anniversary, Prizm 2022 will present Vernacular À la Mode, with presentations of select galleries and artists exploring how vernacular modes of artmaking originating in global African contexts have influenced the cultivation of fine art practice worldwide. The program will include four sections: Prizm Panels, Prizm Perform, Prizm Film, Prizm Preview, and, of course, Prizm Art Fair at large, exhibiting international artists from Africa and the global African Diaspora. Artists will represent global locales including, Angola, Barbados, South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique, Angola, Martinique, Norway, Portugal, Saint Martin, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom, and many more.
61 NE 41st St. / Website
Big Butch Energy, a collection of new large-scale works, advances Abney's signature style of vibrant and immediate narrative paintings that comment on identity and social structures and reflect on American culture to reveal its exclusive, gendered, and racist undercurrents
61 NE 41st St. / Website
As one of the preeminent painters of the postwar period, with an artistic output that spans grotesque figuration to Pop art to assemblage, Télémaque has been at the forefront of a number of modes that characterize contemporary art. “Hervé Télémaque, 1959–1964” examines the very beginning of his practice, exploring a period of turbulence for the artist, both artistic and existential.
300 N.E. 2nd Ave / Website
The Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) at Miami Dade College (MDC) presents Estuary [Pavilion for MOAD], a work by Cuban American artist Rafael Domenech. The exhibition will be on display until January 2023. "Estuary" is the second exhibition in the MOAD Projects series, which features work by Miami-based artists, including MDC and New World School of the Arts alumni and faculty. Isabela Villanueva is the project's curator. It is a public sculpture, a reflection on the written word, a platform for live performances and public gatherings, and a meditative environment that MOAD commissioned. It's made of common building materials like aluminum framing and can mutate into various spatial configurations. Large panels or "pages" of construction mesh have laser-cut texts that will change throughout the project. Estuary will be installed between buildings 1 and 2 on the Wolfson Campus' Kyriakides Plaza. It will then tour other MDC campuses, and MOAD will develop programming for the pavilions at each location. Domenech graduated from the New World School of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. His artistic practice focuses on architectural and urban design concepts, public gathering spaces, and publishing methodologies.
1530 Collins Ave / Website
Gallery 300 is a traditional, modern, and functional art gallery; the on-premise studios' creative energy. The gallery features a group of successful artists who are inspired by the natural beauty of Sonoma County and want to share their work with locals. Gallery 300 is based on the idea that a working studio is an excellent location for people to view the artwork. Or it could be an art demonstration, an art show, an event, or even music.
Marie began painting in 2016 to visualize black bodies in deep thought by rendering ways emotion can affect our reality. Primarily done in acrylic or gouache, the paintings are emotionally guided and spiritually inspired works of art, acknowledging vulnerability in its various forms specifically related to the Black experience and influenced by their Nigerian heritage. The work of Marie-Josè relies on the notion that the struggle of being vulnerable with others is a relatable phenomenon and aims to bring those feelings to the surface to promote dialogue and action. Their work has been exhibited across California, including the 2020 LA International Art show, and recently featured in the HBO Series "Insecure: The End 2021" documentary.
1530 Collins Ave / Website
Alejandro Salazar was born and raised in the Mexican state of Colima. He currently resides in Austin, Texas. He wishes to leave his imprint on the world through honest explorations of emotion expressed through paintings. He has permanent installations in Mexican institutions as well as private collections such as Loreen Arbus in Los Angeles.
1530 Collins Ave / Website
Nicole (ABE) Titus, the gallery's founder, has had a lifelong vision for Julia Seabrook Gallery. After her first girlfriend's death, Abe named her first art gallery after her. Julia Seabrook, it was felt, deserved to have her name known around the world. The gallery started as a miniature space, woman-owned, black-owned, and veteran-owned company.
Amelia Ford returned home and gathered the remnants of her artworks, intending to use them in a show. She currently resides in Manhattan and maintains a studio in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. -Name Redacted- has returned home after completing outpatient alcoholism treatment.
Photography by: Courtesy of Clark Studio, Claire Oliver Gallery, Kathia St. Hilaire, Legba, 2020, Oil based relief, canvas, paper, enamel, tire skins, leaves, pigment, fabric and metal. Courtesy of Michael and Leslie Weissman, Michael Lopez, Daniel Bock, Kehinde Wiley, Karl Spindler, 2017. © Kehinde Wiley, Aqua Art Miami, Art Miami, CONTEXT Art
