The fair’s largest and most international edition to date features presentations by four guest curators: Natasha Becker, Miguel A. López, Estrellita Brodsky and José Falconi
Miami, November 18, 2021 – Untitled Art is pleased to share the curatorial highlights for the 2021 fair in Miami Beach, taking place from November 30 to December 4, 2021 (VIP Preview: November 29). Brought together for their diverse perspectives and regional expertise and in celebration of the fair’s 10th edition, the expanded curatorial team consists of Natasha Becker and Miguel A. López, Estrellita Brodsky and José Falconi. Their contributions will offer fairgoers the opportunity to discover up-and-coming talent as well as a chance to engage with work by renowned artists – both historical and contemporary.
Natasha Becker, Curator of African Art at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, showcases Reinvention, a group presentation that profiles eleven galleries dedicated to Black voices. The resulting inter-cultural dialogue between Africa, Latin America, Europe and America will illuminate artists who are invested in radical open-mindedness. Reinvention is dedicated to transcending north and south, past and present – and choosing instead the in-between as a location of confinement and isolation. The presentation will feature work from eleven galleries: Albertz Benda, Anna Zorina Gallery, BEERS London, Bode Projects, Davidson Gallery, De Buck Gallery, Galerie Julien Cadet, Gallery1957, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles and WHATIFTHEWORLD. In addition to the curated presentation, Becker will also facilitate multiple discussions for the Untitled Art podcast. These will be featured alongside new episodes with artists, curators and authors who will discuss topics ranging from Latinx art to climate change. Becker’s episodes, named Future Knowing, will explore the evolution of the art world and whether the arts will continue to become accessible, supportive and inclusive in the future.
Miguel A. López, a Peruvian writer, researcher and former Co-Director and Chief Curator of TEOR/éTica in San José, Costa Rica, presents Moving Feeling. This presentation highlights a series of works from different generations and geographies where the body appears as a tool to investigate the social. Through two-dimensional representations, sculptural artifacts with a corporeal dimension or performative actions, these selected pieces erase the border between the public and the private, resettle the body concerning normative codes of behavior and explore the gendered and racialization of space as well as ideas about citizenship, belonging and urgency. In different ways, these works reclaim the power of the body to reconnect with unrealized imaginings and transformative political desire. Featured galleries include: 1969 Gallery, Bill Arning Presents, Bockley Gallery, Dio Horia Gallery, Erin Cluley Gallery, Galería del Paseo, Galerie Kandlhofer, Javiera Aninat’s Projects, La Galería Rebelde, Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Monica King Projects and Steve Turner Gallery.
Estrellita Brodsky, art historian, collector, and advocate for art from Latin America, in collaboration with José Falconi, Professor of Art History and Human Rights at the University of Connecticut, will co-curate the exhibition Elsewhere(s), centered around themes of cosmology, magic, shamanism and non-Western forms of knowledge. Assuming geographical indetermination as an aesthetic principle, the exhibition brings together historical and contemporary works from over twenty-five artists from Latin America and its diaspora, drawn from Untitled Art’s roster of participating galleries as well as Latin American private collections and institutions. Occupying various spaces around the fair’s main entrance, Elsewhere(s) defies the traditionally peripheral position of the region’s art within the art market, while reflecting on artists’ ability to envision new worlds, new paths and newly imagined territories.
Offering further support for emerging voices at the fair will be a new cash prize, supported by Stelle & Fortuna, awarded to the best gallery presentation at Untitled Art’s new ‘Nest’ sector, which launches this year in aid of emerging galleries, collectives and non-profits who have been impacted by the global pandemic.
“Untitled Art has always valued and utilized varying curatorial perspectives. This year, we welcome four guest curators, whose unique presentations across the fair support diverse voices, both historical and contemporary. We hope the expanded curatorial presentations will provide a sense of discovery and connection for viewers,” says Omar López-Chahoud, Artistic Director, Untitled Art.
“The global pandemic exposed realities that we know exist; there are economic Souths in the geographic North and Norths in the geographic South. Thus, the Global South no longer refers to geography and nation states but to spaces and peoples negatively impacted by contemporary capitalist globalization, the global art market, global environmental disasters and global viruses. I’m excited to curate an experiment in juxtaposition that attempts to transcend both geopolitics and a bipolar narrative of North and South,” said Natasha Becker, guest curator.
“I’m thrilled to collaborate in this special edition of Untitled Art. My curatorial contribution will be an exploration on how body representation and movement offer other ways to reconsider ideas about citizenship, the public, collective memory, belonging and urgency. The idea is to create a plural conversation regarding the power of the body and its potential to reconnect with transformative desire,” said Miguel A. López, guest curator.
“I am delighted to be collaborating with my colleague José Falconi to champion the work of Latin American artists at Untitled Art. Throughout my academic and philanthropic work as well as the activities of my nonprofit program ANOTHER SPACE, I have always strived to broaden appreciation of the art from Latin America within a global context. With our exhibition Elsewhere(s), we want to reflect on the marginal position of LatinX and Latin American artists within the Western historical canon and bring visibility to the region’s tradition of otherworldliness, shamanism and other esoteric forms of knowledge rejected by Modernism,” said Estrellita Brodsky, guest curator.
“It is an honor to be part of this special edition of Untitled Art – a fair I have always admired and followed. It has been ten remarkable years for a fair that is now synonymous with cutting-edge creativity and impeccable curatorial rigor. The fact that the fair has provided an opportunity to collaborate with my esteemed colleague Dr. Estrellita Brodsky to conceptualize and produce a show on Latin American art for its premises makes this collaboration particularly special for me,” said José Falconi, guest curator.