March 5, 2021
The City of Miami Beach is excited to announce the participating artists and properties for the Miami Beach Open House, a city-led investment in revitalizing its business corridors with experimental artist residences that take advantage of open space. The program includes temporary public indoor and outdoor art installations across the city.
The Miami Beach Open House is activating empty spaces across Miami Beach to support local artists and the art scene, which has been hard hit by the pandemic and subsequent economic downturn. Privately owned open spaces serve as work areas, studios, exhibition rooms and communal areas that promote dialogue and collaboration. Working with the participating owners, the Miami Beach Open House provides the space and support necessary for the arts and crafts and peer-to-peer exchanges, and supports the growth of the city’s entire arts scene. The participating properties range from empty shop fronts, city offices, former restaurants, nightclubs to public parks and cultural institutions.
“The city of Miami Beach is dedicated to the arts and culture, and we will not let the challenges of last year detract from that status,” said Dan Gelber, Miami Beach Mayor. “With this in mind, we are extremely pleased to be able to present programs like Open House, which offer a platform on which our local companies and artists can support one another.”
The program offers 71 artists and non-profit cultural organizations heavily subsidized space and financial support. Each artist was awarded a $ 2,500 scholarship, with attendees paying a small fee for their space. In collaboration with the city, each artist agreed to rent terms with the owners. Open House officially runs until early summer 2021, and select artists are working with property owners to stay at their locations indefinitely.
In the context of each of these spaces, artists have the opportunity to exhibit and sell their work, network, and collaborate with Miami Beach institutions and their constituencies. Through this project, property owners can positively support the innovative cultural work in Miami Beach, make their properties accessible to the public and at the same time create new, accessible spaces and platforms for cultural tourism.
Project highlights
Selected highlights among the currently shown open house installations are:
Sets of Juan Requena at 640 Collins Avenue. In his multimedia work, Requena tells stories about situations related to racial discrimination, gender thinking, human relationships and our behavior in natural habitats. He is currently working with textiles, powders, video and sound. His floor installations, glowing in the dark, present powder phrases that are fragile and short-lived at the same time. The statements come from books, films and the personal conversations of the artists.
In the Rotunda in Collins Park, Najja Moon has installed an abstract sound sculpture entitled My mother would say I lack discipline. Commissioned by the Bass Museum for New Monuments, the work will use a wide range of voice recordings of women uttering maternal affirmations, memories, and criticisms, as part of a five-year initiative supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The rotunda will also serve as a meeting point for these interviews. Moon is also developing a second project in which she transforms her drawings into music. A number of musicians will work to perform the scores she wrote [on site].
Located at 7409 Collins AvenueMichelle Weinberg presents Night drawings for pedestrians, This transforms the storefront into a light box. The work consists of invented architectures in which carbon paper is used to create idiosyncratic symmetries. After the drawings are completed, the black carbon papers, which contain layers of drawing markings, 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 that flashes back to the community.
Founded in 2018 in partnership with the City of Miami Beach, the Reflection Department is a foil (or reflection) of communal units that creates creative moments of exchange (and reflection) between the commune and its residents. As a postal government agency, the Department of Reflection works internally but maintains its autonomy by promoting and interrogating the work of the government while building bridges between it and the residents of Miami Beach. His work brings new perspectives to important local discussions and ideally even leads to solutions. The reflection department is located at 800 Ocean Drive.
Sunset archive, a collaboration with the FIU curator Yi Chin Hsieh and visual artist Juan Requenawill be a 20 minute video installation by Reqena entitled Galaxy View. The video filmed on the outside doors of 431 Washington Avenue was shot from a first person perspective and has been collecting sunset scenes on a beach in Mumbai, India for years. The artist placed a camera on a small remote-controlled car and monitored it in Bandra West, Mumbai to document the sunset. While enjoying the view from afar, the video guides the viewer through piles of rubbish and encounters with wild animals on the beach and offers the audience multi-perspective views and thoughts on environmental issues, urban lifestyle and mental stability. In the words of the artist, “The video pays homage to the abundant but fragile, threatened natural resources of this region.”
A curatorial advisory board composed of members of the Committee on Art in Public Places and the Council on Cultural Arts selected 71 applicants to attend the Miami Beach Open House.
Participating artists
- Studio AMLgMATD
- Jason aponte
- Jenna Balfe
- Flamenco ballet La Rosa
- Bas Fisher Invitational
- Thomas Bils
- Liene forest
- Scott Brennan
- Belaxis Bull
- Laura Casanas
- Domingo Castillo
- Beatriz Chachamovits
- BABA collective
- Coral Morphologic
- Penny Crane
- Cuban Classical Ballet from Miami
- Carolina Cueva
- Dance now Miami
- Desperate way
- Bernadette Despujols
- Gianna DiBartolomeo
- Dimensions of dance theater
- Dimensions variable
- Giannina Dwin
- Jenna Efrein
- Christian Feneck
- Fiber Artist 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
- WAY to hip-hop
- Edison Penafiel
- 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 Sodamine
- Misael Soto
- Erin Thurlow
- Eric Trope
- Alexander Valencia
- Joshua Veasey
- Michelle Weinberg
- Michael Williams
- Young musicians unite
The Miami Beach Open House Program is made possible by the generosity of the owners listed below. All areas are available for long-term leasing options. Additional owners will be added throughout the duration of the program.
420 Lincoln Road development
Robinson properties
Ocean Terrace Holdings
Goldman Properties
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This press release was produced by the City of Miami Beach. The views expressed here are the author’s own.
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