Culture comes alive this week in Miami as the city celebrates art from around the world. Whether it’s Art Basel Miami Beach, the famed Point Comfort Art Fair + Show, or the numerous art exhibitions and shows happening throughout the city, Black artists, past and present, are taking center stage.
Tapping their pens, paints, clay, cameras and many other mediums, these Black artists express their culture, heritage and views on their communities to showcase how art can reflect and transform the world through their creations. Here are several artists and exhibitions to put on your viewing roster this week.
Gary Tyler, Grief Not Guilty: Reclaiming My Time — The Black Police Precinct and Courthouse Museum (December 5)
This evocative art exhibition features celebrated activist artist Gary Tyler and local floral designer Quantavia Love. It showcases Tyler’s poignant journey through 41 years of wrongful incarceration, confronting critical issues of systemic injustice while celebrating the human capacity for growth and healing.
NEXT IN… — Billionaire Boys Club (December 6)
December 6, rapper, actor, cultural tastemaker and contributing editor Joey Bada$$ will host the launch of SpringHill’s Zine, The Program, Vol. 3. The Zine will spotlight SpringHill’s inaugural Craft Class of 16 amazing emerging talents across dozens of mediums who are reshaping the landscapes of art, design and cultural movements. The night will present five participating artists, including Jewel Ham, Doug Hickman and Ian Woods, and feature a special music performance and a set by DJ Nix.
Sharon Waters, Seeing Ourselves — HackelBury at Art Miami (December 6-8)
Walters, a London-based artist and project curator who debuted her work during London’s Black History Month, explores identity, beauty standards and race through intricate paper cutouts and hand-assembled collages. In her pieces, Walters creates dimensional and complex depictions of Black women. Floated in glass, her paper cuts cast shadows of themselves, alluding to a past within. This allows her practice to confront exclusionary and other narratives perpetuated against Black communities, emphasizing our right to “take up space.”
Geoffrey Holder — James Fuentes Gallery at Art Basel Miami Beach (December 6-8)
A presentation of the former principal with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Tony-winning costume designer and celebrated painter’s unseen works will be displayed at the namesake art fair in the Miami Beach Convention Center. Holder’s vivid portraits of Black people are rich with cultural pride and exuberance from his Trinidad roots.
Reginald Sylvester II — CANADA at Art Basel Miami Beach (December 6 – 8)
Working predominantly in abstraction, Sylvester II makes large-scale paintings and sculptures which often include found objects. His work is often a matrix of pop-culture allegories, complex material histories and reckonings with biblical and nuclear dystopias.
