EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS

This section we feature our selected commissioned and special projects from our Art Basel Miami Exhibitions from 2017-2019.

Reynier Leyva Novo

Centro De Acopio, 2018

From the La Bodega Y Más, 2018 exhibition

Location: Versailles Bakery + El Espacio On Ocho ( Little Havana)

In the last three decades, a significant number of Cubans have immigrated to the United States, arriving to Miami, Florida -the closest piece of land to the island. Little Havanna, located in La Calle Ocho, has become the home to many Cubans in this exodus. It is also where the site specific exhibition titled La Bodega y Más took place, and where Cuban artist Reynier Leyva Novo was invited to have a performative action. Between November 23 and December 11, 2018, Novo set up shop for a Centro De Acopio or Collection Center, where he invited Cuban migrants to donate their used clothes that were then  turned into a 16 foot carpet, paying homage to the popular Cuban tradition of reusing clothes to make new objects for their homes. The action connects signs and referents, art and society, man and history. The work became an anthropological map that revised Cuban daily life. The finalized piece -which was assembled in Cuba- was exhibited in Landlord Colors: On Art, Economy, and Materiality exhibition at the Cranbrook Museum in Detroit in Summer 2019.

A popular tradition in Cuba consists in recycling old clothes into new pieces to be used at home. The most frequent is the elaboration of blankets, eiderdowns and rugs. This textile recycling method may be carried out in numerous ways: through the patchwork technique, joining strips of fabric, tying pieces of cloth to a surface, etc. Untitled appropriates this object commonly found in Cuban homes. This precarious, daily and randomly abstract piece is capable of becoming a space of discussions about the symbolic dimension of clothes (fashions, uniforms, etc.) or the possibilities of politicizing the space we live in or step on.

The elaboration of the rug was carried out by representatives of the most popular roots: men and women from the neighborhood of Párraga, a semi-rural locality in the southern periphery of the Cuban capital. A forgotten, urban space marked by the label of delinquency, marginality and poverty. The leading figures are not the ones presented by the slogans but ordinary Cubans facing day-to-day life. The neighbors of 63 Justo St. were convoked to gather used clothes, regardless of their state of preservation. Each piece was cut into stripes, resulting in a number of pieces, and each donated article became a referential sign of the person who brought it. Later, the workers began to knit on opposite corners, leaving the center for the end. The tearing and weaving functions were alternated in a one week working session. The work was seasoned with jokes, music and rum. The cloth is randomly knotted on a piece of nylon. It is thus that the rug attains its characteristic form. The action is a social initiative that grants opportunities to unemployed men and women by cutting out, plaiting, and tying up pieces of fabric to be used in making rugs .It connects signs and references, art and society, humankind and history. It ends by becoming an anthropologic map, a poetic re-visitation of daily life.

LOOT was a site specific participatory installation presented within the group show WE BUY GOLD, which questioned the extent to which humans will go for the sake of greed, especially at the expense of our natural resources. 

A solid 42 gram piece of 24k gold (valued at approximately $2,000 USD) was buried within one of eight bags each composed with 1 ton of dirt. Each bag was screen printed with different dates within history that account for moments in history where the looting and the subsequent destruction of land and its natural resources occurred, in this case alluding specifically to gold mining, which began in the Amazon region as early as the 16th century.

JACK HENRY

Concrete Nature

From La Bodega y Mas, 2018 exhibition

Location: El Espacio On Ocho (Little Havana)

The artist Jack Henry took over the abandoned corner space within the El Espacio to do what would seem to be the impossible, grow grass inside a concrete space. After weeks of seeding and watering the space transformed into a lush green zone. The artists constructed large sculptural panels on the windows to evoke mystery and gage interest into what lies further inside the building. The installation was visible from the street and sidewalk and plays with the themes of Mother Nature vs Man-Made.