City of Miami Beach Announces Artists in ‘Miami Beach Open House’ on View Through Summer 2021

Visual Arts
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— Initiative Artists Creating Projects in Vacant Miami Beach Retail Spaces—

The City of Miami Beach is pleased to announce the participating artists and properties for Miami Beach Open House, a city-led investment in the revitalization of its commercial corridors with experiential artist residencies utilizing vacant spaces. The program will feature indoor and outdoor temporary public art installations throughout the city.

Miami Beach Open House activates empty spaces throughout Miami Beach to support local artists and the arts community which were greatly impacted by the pandemic and subsequent economic downturn. Privately-owned vacant spaces serve as workspaces, studios, exhibition space and communal areas that encourage dialogue and collaboration. In partnership with participating property owners, Miami Beach Open House provides the space and support necessary for artmaking and peer-to-peer exchange, supporting growth for the city’s entire arts community. Participating properties range from vacant storefronts, city offices, former restaurants, nightclubs to public parks and cultural venues.

“The City of Miami Beach is dedicated to art and culture, and we will not allow the challenges of the past year to diminish that status,” explained Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber. “It is with this in mind that we are exceedingly pleased to be able to present programs like Open House, which will provide a platform to allow our local businesses and artists to mutually support each other.”

The program provides a heavily subsidized space and financial support to 71 artists and nonprofit cultural organizations. A stipend of $2,500 was given to each artist with participants paying a nominal fee for their space. Working alongside the city, each artist agreed to lease terms with property owners. Open House formally runs through early Summer 2021, with select artists working with property owners to stay at their locations for the indefinite future.

Working in the context of each of these spaces, artists have the opportunity to exhibit and sell their works, build networks, and collaborate with Miami Beach institutions and their constituents. Through this project, property owners are able to positively support innovative cultural work in Miami Beach, and expose their properties to the public while creating new, accessible spaces and platforms for cultural tourism.

Project Highlights
Selected highlights among Open House installations currently on view include Phrases by Juan Requena at 640 Collins Avenue. Through his multimedia work, Requena tells stories of situations related to racial discrimination, post gender thinking, human relationships and our behavior in the natural habitat. Currently working with textiles, powder, video & sound, his glow in the dark floor installations present phrases made of powder that are at once fragile and ephemeral. The statements are taken from books, movies and the artists’ personal conversations.

At the Rotunda in Collins Park, Najja Moon has installed an abstract sound sculpture titled, My mother would say I lack discipline. Commissioned by The Bass Museum for New Monuments, as part of a five-year initiative supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the work will use a wide range of voice recordings of women speaking maternal affirmations, reminders and critiques. The Rotunda will also serve as a meeting point to conduct those interviews. Moon is also developing a second project, where she is transcribing her drawings into music. An array of musicians will be working to perform the scores she writes [on site].

At 7409 Collins Avenue, Michelle Weinberg is presenting Night Drawings for Pedestrians, which converts the storefront into a light box. The work is composed of invented architectures, using carbon paper to create wayward symmetries. After the drawings are completed, the black carbon papers that contain layers of drawing marks are illuminated at night, revealing the skeletal architecture of the drawings, like an X-ray or a blueprint. The installation appears as a long, illuminated graphic novel winking back at the community.

Founded in 2018, in collaboration with the City of Miami Beach, the Department of Reflection is a foil (or reflection) of municipal entities that produces creative moments of exchange (and reflection) between the municipality and its residents. As a post-governmental agency, the Department of Reflection collaborates internally but maintains its autonomy, pushing and interrogating the work of the government while creating bridges between it and the residents of Miami Beach. Its work brings new perspectives to important local conversations, ideally even leading to solutions. The Department of Reflection is located at 800 Ocean Drive.

Sunset Archive, a collaboration with FIU curator Yi Chin Hsieh and visual artist Juan Requena, will present a 20-minute video installation by Reqena titled, Galaxy View. The video – cast on the exterior doors of 431 Washington Avenue – was shot in the first-person perspective, collecting sunset scenes for years at a beach in Mumbai, India. The artist placed a camera on a small remote-controlled car and monitored it at Bandra West, Mumbai, documenting the sunset. While enjoying the view from far, the video also walks the viewer through piles of garbage and encounters with wild animals at the beach, providing the audience multi-perspective views and thoughts on environmental issues, urban lifestyles, and mental stability. In the artist’s words “The video pays homage to the lush but fragile, threatened natural resources of this region.”

A curatorial advisory committee, composed of members of the Art in Public Places Committee and Cultural Arts Council, selected 71 applicants to participate in Miami Beach Open House.

Participating Artists

  • Studio AMLgMATD
  • Jason Aponte
  • Jenna Balfe
  • Ballet Flamenco La Rosa
  • Bas Fisher Invitational
  • Thomas Bils
  • Liene Bosque
  • Scott Brennan
  • Belaxis Buil
  • Laura Casanas
  • Domingo Castillo
  • Beatriz Chachamovits
  • BABA Collective
  • Coral Morphologic
  • Penny Crane
  • Cuban Classical Ballet of Miami
  • Carolina Cueva
  • Dance Now! Miami
  • Cara Despain
  • Bernadette Despujols
  • Gianna DiBartolomeo
  • Dimensions Dance Theatre
  • Dimensions Variable
  • Giannina Dwin
  • Jenna Efrein
  • Christian Feneck
  • Fiber Artists Miami (FAMA Art)
  • Chris Friday
  • Lucila Garcia de Onrubia
  • Mauricio Giammattei
  • Jessica Gispert
  • Kristin Guerin
  • Jacquelyn Guerrero
  • Alan Gutierrez
  • Hispafest
  • Rachel Hovnanian
  • Yi Chin Hsieh
  • Carla Jerez
  • Summer Jade Leavitt
  • Justin Long
  • Monica Lopez De Victoria
  • Laura Marsh
  • Juan Matos
  • David McCauley
  • Miami Beach Urban Studios-FIU
  • Miami Dance Hub
  • Najja Moon
  • Charo Oquet
  • PATH to Hip-Hop
  • Edison Peñafiel
  • Devora Perez
  • Peter London Global Dance Company
  • Lee Pivnik
  • Project Art
  • Juan Requena
  • Timothy Reyes
  • Adee Roberson
  • Dinorah de Jesús Rodriguez
  • George Sanchez-Calderon
  • Nathaniel Sandler
  • Tom Scicluna
  • Barron Sherer
  • Magnus Sodamin
  • Misael Soto
  • Erin Thurlow
  • Eric Trope
  • Alejandro Valencia
  • Joshua Veasey
  • Michelle Weinberg
  • Michael Williams
  • Young Musicians Unite

The Miami Beach Open House program is made possible through the generosity of the property owners listed below. All spaces are available for long-term leasing opportunities.  Additional property owners will be added throughout the duration of the program.

420 Lincoln Road Development

Robinson Properties

Ocean Terrace Holdings

Goldman Properties

 

Contact: Abby Addams