Better known for its opulent parties, incongruous celebrity appearances and VIP events, Art Basel Miami Beach is definitely the most extra of global art fairs. Over its seventeen-year history, the fair has earned a reputation for being the glitzy counterpart to its generally quite sedate Basel sister. Each year the four-day event attracts thousands of gallerists, collectors and art enthusiasts as much for the party lifestyle as the art itself — by which we mean of course everyone is there for the free Champagne.
Notwithstanding the usual superficial fare at times — this year’s edition had some thoughtful and politically-infused artworks on display that weren’t entirely overshadowed by Kanye West learning to skateboard or Cardi B showing up. Putting aside the endless lists of celebrity sightings, the splashy shindigs and big spends, we wanted to highlight some of the events that brought socially-conscious topics to the fore, including Brazil’s turbulent political situation, feminism and race relations. Here’s our pick.
Mendes Wood DM.
Despite the dwindling numbers of the Brazilian art institutions and artists represented this year, there was a significant influx of political and socially aware work exhibited across the event by Brazilian galleries. Sáo Paulo’s Mendes Wood DM, for example, exhibited a selection of politically-charged work. Many in opposition to the newly elected far right regime in Brazil, their booth this year included work by Sonia Gomes —the first living Afro-Brazilian woman to have a solo show at a major Brazilian museum — and work by Antonio Obá, who recently exiled to Europe after he was threatened with jail time because of his controversial 2015 art work, Acts of Transfiguration: Disappearance of a Recipe for a Saint, which saw him grinding up a Virgin Mary statue and pouring the liquidated figurine over his naked body.
Damon Davis — Darker Gods
Multimedia artist Damon Davis‘s Art Basel Miami debut, Darker Gods in The Garden of The Low Hanging, provided a fascinating commentary on current race relations in North America. Described as an “Afrosurrealist epic” the immersive exhibition depicted a world within the gallery where Gods are represented as “deities of colour”. Davis’ show told a mesmeric story of eleven gods, whose superhuman characteristics are exaggerated from tropes of blackness as defined from a white American perspective. Through multi-sensory experience, the exhibition expressed the dangerous implications of such generalisations.
Judy Chicago — A Reckoning
There was an encouraging number of high-profile female artists occupying some of the top spots in this year’s programme, with artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Cecily Brown and Marina Abramovic represented in booths across town. Alongside them, a concurrent retrospective of Judy Chicago’s work opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami along with an artist talk at the fair on Saturday. The show is one of the most extensive surveys of the pioneering feminist artist’s works to date, and seeks to explore the shift in her work from abstract to figurative to frame the development of her feminist perspective. Chicago explained that the show can be read as a roadmap for female artists wanting to start their careers because “it’s important to know what you’re going to face, and to be able to identify it”.
Pedro Neves Marques — A Mordida
A Mordida, which opened alongside the main fair, is the first solo US show of the work of Portuguese artist Pedro Neves Marques, and grapples with gender dynamics in Brazil through two films that blur the line between documentary and fiction. Based on research completed at a genetically modified mosquito factory in São Paulo, the films parallel the spread of the Zika virus with the lives of the films’ protagonists as they negotiate the ups and downs of a non-binary relationship.
AFRICOBRA — Messages to the People
Meanwhile at The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, the exhibition AFRICOBRA, which opened in conjunction with the fair, explores the founding of the Black artist collective of the same name that helped establish the visual aesthetic of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and ’70s. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the collective’s founding, and the exhibition reveals how the members’ styles developed together to create a philosophy of art for the people, one which is inspired by African communities.