The 2023 edition of the Art Basel Americas event in Miami Beach features new show highlights and a robust cultural programme. This December, the biggest expo in the Americas will host 277 top international galleries, with 25 new exhibitors joining the seasoned lineup and two-thirds of exhibitors from North and Latin America.
• The Meridians sector will showcase 19 monumental artworks, including new and site-specific works, focusing on our collective impact on the planet. The Kabinett sector will showcase 28 curated installations in 30 galleries. Art Basel’s Conversations programme, free to the public, will include live conversations on influential art and cultural subjects, highlighting Latin America. Art Basel will combine with top institutions, private collections, and cultural partners to host a diverse programme of exhibits and activities in Miami Beach over the fair week. With UBS as Global Lead Partner.
De Bellis is organising this year’s fair. Bridget Finn, the new Art Basel Miami Beach director, will head the exhibition in 2024.
‘We welcome the artworld back to Art Basel Miami Beach this year with curated sectors and
programming as inspired and ambitious as ever,’ said Vincenzo de Bellis, Director, Fairs
and Exhibition Platforms, Art Basel.
Meridians presents 19 projects, including new and site-specific pieces at Art Basel Miami Beach, showcasing historical and contemporary works outside standard art fair booths. For the fourth year, Magalí Arriola, curator and Director of Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City, curates a sector featuring works that explore nature, land, and cultural and spiritual geographies in a world of shifting boundaries and identities.
Highlights: • American artist Ja’Tovia Gary’s 26-minute installation, based on Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, at Paula Cooper Gallery (New York), incorporates vintage Hollywood imagery, direct animation, original super8 footage, documentary elements, and a recreated domestic environment.
The Met’s Gilt (2022) suite, curated by Almine Rech, features four sculptures by Guyanese-British artist Hew Locke that reflect on the power and its representation. The suite references works from the museum’s collection and is displayed in various locations.
• Private Collection (2023), a painted fence yard by Bay Area artist Saif Azzuz, explores access, land privatisation, settler colonialism, and Indigenous survival at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery (New York).
• “1968: El fuego de las Ideas” (‘1968: The Fire of Ideas’) (2014-2018) by Argentinean artist and human rights activist Marcelo Brodsky, an exhibition of archive photos highlighting worldwide political and public events of 1968, exhibited by Rolf Art (Buenos Aires).
• The Cellist (2023), Reginald O’Neal’s first sculptural installation, is a ten-foot-tall jazz cellist figure in an atmosphere resembling images from his ‘Entertainer’ painting series, exhibited by Spinello Projects (Miami).
• Jessica Silverman (San Francisco) exhibited Julie Buffalohead’s Compatriots (2023), an installation of large-scale figurative paintings inspired by her history and based on her symbolic language.
The ‘Ígnea’ series by Mexican artist Gabriel de la Mora, presented by Proyectos Monclova (Mexico City), features monochromatic works made of hand-carved andesite and obsidian fragments on wood, utilising materials valued by Mesoamerican peoples for their symbolism and utility.
Kabinett
The Miami Beach show’s Kabinett area, comprising art-historical and solo presentations, will return with 28 curated installations in exhibitors’ major booths.
Highlights: • Caroline Coon’s U.S. solo exhibition, showcasing her ‘beach series’, coincides with Tate Britain’s ‘Women in Revolt!’ group show at Stephen Friedman Gallery (London, New York).
In 2023, Canada presented Cafe Cleopatra, a site-specific installation of new sculptures and drawings by New York-based artist Elisabeth Kley, known for her black and white ceramic sculptures, vessels, drawings, and paintings inspired by modernist theatre sets and costume designs.
• New paintings by Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick, presented by Hales (New York), combine rural American landscapes with Native American designs. • Kandis Williams’ lenticular prints, presented by Morán Morán (Los Angeles, Mexico City), challenge racial and gendered stereotypes through portrayals of Black female characters.
• Sallisa Rosa’s ceramics and watercolours, created for the fair, explore memory via materiality and are displayed by A Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo).
The show will feature exhibitors from four new industries announced earlier this year. Galleries showcase a variety of exhibitions, including works by Argentinian-Italian surrealist Leonor Fini from his personal collection, presented by Galerie Minsky (Paris) and Weinstein Gallery (San Francisco), and a tribute to Brockman Gallery, the first major contemporary gallery for Black artists, co-organized by Parrasch Heijnen Gallery (Los Angeles). In Nova, galleries will feature new works by up to three artists. The Ranch (New York) will feature sculptures by Puerto Rican artist Daniel Lind-Ramos, inspired by his hometown of Loíza, a large Afro-Caribbean enclave in Puerto Rico. Gypsum Gallery (Cairo) will present Basim Magdy’s paintings for the first time in the U.S.
Galatea (Rio de Janeiro) will showcase a new photo series by Brazilian artist Allan Weber, recognised for his work on slum life in Positions, a sector for young galleries featuring solo presentations by rising voices. Dürst Britt & Mayhew (The Hague), the first Dutch gallery at Art Basel Miami Beach, will showcase new work by Mexican artist Alejandra Venegas, hand-carved on local wood. Survey, showcasing historical relevance in art, features solo exhibitions by American artist Karen Finley about her 1977 interactive installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and American artist Vivian Browne’s ‘Africa Series’ paintings from the 1st century.
Since its founding in 1970 by Basel gallerists, Art Basel hosts the top modern and contemporary art exhibits in Basel, Miami Beach, Hong Kong, and Paris. The host city and area define each show, which has distinct galleries, artworks, and parallel programming organised with local institutions for each edition.
Art Basel will be held in the Miami Beach Convention Centre (MBCC) from December 8-10, 2023, with Preview Days on December 6 and 7.
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