I have my share of grievances and criticisms about this Art Basel season,as do many Miami natives involved in the Arts, but this year, I’m leading with a renewed sense of optimism and faith.
Born and raised in Miami, I’ve witnessed artists, galleries, and curators come and go, yet something about the city’s current state feels charged with potential. I could draw comparisons to New York, Los Angeles, or Europe, but the truth is simpler. As a young gallerist often called “brave”—a word I find both endearing and frustrating in this context. I don’t define what I do as bravery, it feels more like an instinct, not a risk. Elevating the scene unfolding here feels like a responsibility to every artist who chooses to stay in the city where everyone else vacations, and to create serious, conceptual, and critical art from within it.
Within the cultivated atmosphere of my contemporaries, among the humidity and the obsessive vertical growth of luxury towers, lives the true resolve: the will to build our own community, our own empire, our history. The following recommendations only scratch the surface of what the hyperlocals around me are up to. Tomorrow Is My Turn, the 1965 song by Nina Simone which I could listen to twenty times over (and am, as I write this), encapsulates my philosophy for Miami’s churning footprint in the Art world. Miami is next. And if, after visiting nearly everything on this list, you still find it brave or bold to say so, I formally invite the criticism. Conversation is half of the work.
1) Reginald O’Neal is a well-known name in the Miami art scene, and deservedly so. Born in Miami, FL, and raised in the historically Black neighborhood of Overtown, he paints narratives drawn from his upbringing and the essence of what surrounds him. His sensibility is evident whether he’s creating a handheld-sized piece or a large mural, many of which exist both locally and abroad. One of my personal favorites is his mural honoring the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 1416 in Overtown, completed in late 2022. I recommend visiting not only the mural but also the neighborhood, which, sadly, grows a little less like the Overtown O’Neal grew up in with each passing year. When you visit, you’re not only encountering the work but also the foundational physical context which shapes his very practice. Up close, you’ll find QR codes embedded in the mural that link to oral history videos documenting the contributions of Black longshoremen in Miami.
2) I recently opened the flagship location of my gallery and magazine,QUEUE Gallery, in Downtown Miami this late Summer. Last year, I operated nomadically, organizing a pop-up exhibition at a retired gas station in Opa-locka with Miami-raised artists Ezekiel Jabari Binns, Juan Pablo Cardona, and Luis Ignacio Figallo. This year, I have the honor of introducing Phoenix-based artist Morgan Leigh, who will debut her first solo exhibition in Miami,TEETHING,at QUEUE Gallery on December 3rd, from 7–10 p.m at 212 N Miami Ave,33128.QUEUE Gallery is located on the second floor. Art Week hours are December 4–8, from 2 to 7 p.m.
Leigh relocated to Phoenix with her young daughter nearly a decade ago, drawn to the still, dry quiet of the desert that now anchors her practice. Rooted in care, memory, and transformation, her work reflects on grief, love, motherhood, and surrender—held in dialogue with the body and the land. Her practice carries the weight of being a mother, a woman of color, and a human unrooted, while honoring the cycles between life and loss. Personally, her work has moved me since the moment I first encountered it. To me, her pieces recall my younger self—the girl who spent humid Miami afternoons collecting stones and feathers, assigning each a secret power. They feel like a grown woman’s tribute to those early, self-made wonders, shaped by years of reflection, grief, and love, unafraid of heartbreak, and aware that to love is also to lose
3) I may be slightly biased because I spent a few formative years developing my own taste there, but everyone knows that Miami’s private and public art collections are among the strongest places to see art. The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse in Wynwood is one of the best, housing an expansive selection of international contemporary works. In particular, it holds the largest collection of Anselm Kiefer artworks in the United States. If you’d like to delve further into my personal obsession—and my experience being surrounded by Kiefer’s work on a weekly basis—you can read my piece for The Miami Native magazine: Pilgrimage: Anselm Kiefer at The Margulies Collection – Conceptual Art in a Literal City. The collection’s Art Basel week hours are Monday through Saturday, December 1–6, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. And they serve good coffee every morning; I know because I used to help serve it.
4) For those who find themselves stuck over the bridge in South Beach for most of the week, I encourage you to visit a vibrant and deeply hyperlocal collaborative group show between QUEUE Gallery, Supermarket Gallery, and The Miami Arts Society at the goodtime hotel on 601 Washington Ave. The exhibition, titled borderline, takes place on the third floor of the hotel in its pink, velvety, art deco–inspired library, and features eleven South Florida–based artists working across mediums. The included artists are Harumi Abe, Gabriela Ayza Aschmann, Tony Chirinos, Filio Galvez, Liang Lansi, Leah Mendez, Alejandra Moros, Gustavo Oviedo, Johnny Robles, Victor Urroz, and Ana Vergara. borderline borrows its title from the 1983 Madonna single—a biting plea for normalcy that’s since become a nostalgic dance classic. Here, “borderline” echoes both the artists’ work and the galleries’ approach to tastemaking within a culture suspended between the tangible and the digital. The featured works push familiar media toward the thresholds of the reimagined, the rebellious, and the provocative.
5 ) I’ve been quite lucky lately to be neighbors with Rice Hotel, a vintage hotel turned expansive studio and project space by native Miami artist Fared Manzur. The unique Downtown Miami building, with its exposed drywall installations and original flooring, is unlike any other. I’ll try not to describe too much and rob you of the first visceral response you might have upon entering the space and seeing the art contextualized within it—a tension Manzur intentionally cultivates. As Manzur often opens his space to other artists and curators, a group show titled The Body is The Body, curated by Simon Brewer and Nathalie Martin, will open on December 3rd (yes, the same night as QUEUE’s opening — kindred neighbors at work).Alongside exhibiting artists in the group such as Alix Vernet, Mila Rowyszyn, and Chris Cadaver, Fared Manzur will also present a solo exhibition of his own practice. Rice Hotel is located at 30 N Miami Ave, Miami, FL 33130. Their Art Week hours are December 4–8, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
A few other notable local projects and spaces to keep an eye on during Art Week: Pendentive Studio, a vintage furniture store and exhibition space in Miami’s MiMo District; catch artist Kahlil Robert Irving at Tunnel Projects, an artist-run studio and exhibition space founded by Luna Palazzolo-Daboul in a basement parking lot in Little Havana; CITY STATE, an experimental complex of showrooms, studios, and a sculpture garden founded by Jillian Mayer; Dale Zine, a zine shop and occasional exhibition space in the Design District; Smita Sen and Trina Basu’s live performance presented by Supermarket Gallery; Four in North Miami and Piman Bouk in Little Haiti—located near Laundromat Art Space, an artist-led studio residency and exhibition space—for authentic food; and Uma Lu Vintage for fabulous vintage finds.
With love, Catherine
