ART CIRCUITS

CRITIC'S CHOICE DECEMBER 2021

Arts for the Future

Living in pandemic times has taught us to appreciate the small wonders of daily life.We are particularly excited and grateful for the in-person opportunities to gather and participate in Miami Art Week, the return of Art Basel, and the general panacea South Florida’s art scene has offered us all year. Nhadya Lawes and I have enjoyed working together with Art Circuits to offer critic’s choice, where we were able to highlight the creolizing dynamics of artists and institutions grappling with how to constitute Miami as a city of tomorrow rooted not only in its diversity, but also grounded in equity and meaningful inclusion.We close out this year with the luxury of shows that explore the value of rituals, community and place.We look forward to following the art roadmap that the next critic will provide to navigating our region’s many dynamic arts institutions.

The Betsy

Tamary Kudita: African Victorian

Currently on view

Recognized as the Sony world photographer of the year, Kudita centers continental African women in Dutch-waxed Africanized Victorian dresses, the subject of portraiture and landscape photography.These photographic contemporary images vary from urban streetscapes to countryside where the black female viewing subjects return the photographer’s gaze.


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ICA Miami

Shuvinai Ashoona: Drawings

Nov 30, 2021 – May 1, 2022

In “Shuvinai Ashoona: Drawings,” the first US show, viewers are exposed to the art of the Inuit carvers and printmakers.Transformed in Ashoona’s drawings through large scale drawings and meticulously prints, dynamic practices of everyday life from seal cleaning to yoga classes enigmatically render the evolution of indigenous Arctic life.
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Ellen Lesperance: Amazonknights

Curated by Stephanie Seidel

Nov 30, 2021 – Mar 27, 2022

Honoring feminist activism,llen Lesperance’s exhibition “Amazonknights” presents new and existing paintings and two new sculptures. Drawing inspiration rom Bauhaus-era female weavers, the Pattern and Decoration movement, and feminist art of the 1970s and 1980s centered around the female body, Lesperance reframes image-making outside of male-dominated Western painting traditions while honoring the creative labor of women standing up against social and political ills and environmental destruction.
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EMERSON DORSCH

Yanira Collado: Alchemic Chants/ Reliquías Fragmentadas

On view through Feb 5, 2022

In this solo exhibition, Collado transforms the gallery with a site specific homage to the Port au Prince Market, a neighborhood bodega that previously occupied the space. Using fragments of cardboard, fabric, mesh, and other materials, she pieces together personal and community histories of migration, resistance, and spirituality to create a home for memory and ritual.
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NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale

Jared McGriff: Where We Are You

On view through Feb 13, 2022

With lush watercolors McGriff’s first solo show inserts his family history into the larger great migration narratives of African Americans leaving the rural south to west.

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Black Archives Historic Lyric Theater

If These Streets Could Talk: An Historic Exploration of Black Miami (Part I)

Curated by Timothy Barber

Opens Dec 1

Evoking James Baldwin’s influential novel, this exhibition transports viewers to Black Miami’sneighborhoods before displacement from urban renewal and gentrification.The revitalization of key black institutions is the positive part of the story.Part 2 opens during Black history month in 2022.
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Black Archive

Oolite Arts

Feels Like 97°

Curated by: Michelle Lisa Polissaint

On view through Jan. 23, 2022

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