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| Art Live 2012, formerly known as Wynwood Art Fair, kicks off Friday. |
Art Live 2012 isn't just about seeing art. It's about dancing, crowd surfing, designing balloons, being photographed, writing, eating ... and other fun things too, all in the name of art,
Formerly known as Wynwood Art Fair, Art Live 2012 is an annual weekend-long event in which artists engage fairgoers in the creative process. "We like to say, don't just see art, be it!" organizers note.
The fair, which kicks off Friday night at Coconut Grove Exhibition Center, will include
60 artists and interactive performance-based contemporary art that includes dance, crowd surfing, opera, sculpture, installation, silent videos, floats, food, mobiles, flash mobs and more.
Admission will benefit
Lotus House Women's Shelter, which provides shelter, education and resources to homeless women and children who can live there up to a year for free while accessing the sort of educational, job readiness and community resources that will help them achieve greater self-sufficiency, a better quality of life and a more permanent home. Last year's three-day festival drew more than 10,000 people and raised more than $500,000 from the art auction benefit, sponsorship funds and entrance fees.
Here are the details on just a few of the events taking place at the fair this year:
Anne-Marie Was Here
Anne-Marie Was Here, an interactive art installation, will be presented by
RPM Project, which includes artists
Rhonda Mitrani, Patricia Schnall Gutierrez and Marina Font.
The three women of RPM collaborate on work that addresses challenges they face as artists and mothers. "I was taught when I went to school during the feminist movement, that
we can do it all," Gutierrez told me when I interviewed her for the
Sun-Sentinel earlier this year. What she learned, after getting married in
1976 and having the first of three children, is that we can't do it all
as perfectly as we might like.
RPM's Art Live project, titled "Invitation: Brunch With RPM," was inspired by
Why Women Still Can't Have it All, an article that Anne-Marie Slaughter, the Bert G. Kerstetter '66
University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton
University, wrote for the
Atlantic
magazine. Fairgoers are invited to participate in their "1,2,3 easy steps to perfection. See how today’s super savvy contemporary woman can have her cake and eat it too!"
"Our piece is ongoing as we walk around the crowd with a cart full of
goodies and invitations to 'brunch with the girls' where the viewer
joins in the conversation and adds to the
corresponding blog," Gutierrez explains.
The Eyes of Ahol
Ahol Sniffs Glue will
invite fairgoers to create their own versions of the iconic droopy eyes
he has been painting in Miami for years. The eyes are inspired by some
of Miami's hardest working residents and now will serve s the basis for a
collaboration that ties into the theme of this year's fair: "We Are All
One." On Sunday, the last day of the fair, he will add a layer of his
own signature eyes to the piece.
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| Add caption |
Marie Antoinette X 14
Christina Pettersson, a 36-year-old Swedish-born artist who lives in Miami, is known for her meticulous, large-scale graphite drawings, multi-screen video installations and rewriting the past. Through her work, the artist has resurrected women murdered in Shakespeare plays and birds that were stuffed and killed for art. Now, in
her project titled
Re-Coronation, she will rewrite the story of Marie Antoinette.
As Pettersson notes: "Oh Marie Antoinette, how I long to save you from your terrible past. I long to go back to that first year in France, when you were a mere girl of fourteen, and write the story over again. I can remove the extravagant dresses and cakes and replace them with books and writing. I can make you into someone else, someone meaningful. You became a frivolous, wasteful, and conceited figure, but I can change all that. Let me remove the stigma of shallow luxury, and resurrect you in a different light, full of promise and possibility. Hush once and for all the whispers behind your back, your wretched notoriety. I will erase your story, I will make you good again, my Marie Antoinette.”
Re-Coronation, which will feature 14 Marie Antoinettes, will begin at
6:30 p.m. Friday.
Buda and the Balloons
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Michael Kocherhans a.k.a. "Buda," a Miami artist who upcycles everyday materials into works of art, invites people to custom design balloons and contribute them to a floating mobile of mylar balloons that will swivel on a 40-foot line that hangs from the ceiling and is anchored to the floor.
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| "Ultra Violet 13" by Tom Cocotos |
Collage and mirrors
Tom Cocotos, a Miami collage artist who divides his time between New York and Miami, didn't talk until he was around age 4. Instead he began tearing up or cutting magazine pages and rearranging the words and images into something new. Today, he continues doing this kind of work, using his photographs, sketches and the process of collage to create portraits.
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| Ultra Violet's "Self-Portrait Mirror" |
The Imaginators, a series he is currently working on, features mixed-media portraits of writers, visual artists and musicians whose expressions draw him in. The roster includes Gary Indiana, Jackson Taylor and Cocotos's friend Ultra Violet, author of
Famous for 15 Minutes and a muse to Salvador Dali and Andy Warhol.
Cocotos, who used to scour the streets of New York looking for collaging materials with Ultra Violet, will create a 4x4 collaged portrait of her at the event. "And next to me, Ultra Violet will be presenting her
Baroque self-portrait mirrors," Cocotos notes "It should be quite a show. "
Ultra Violet's Baroque self-portrait mirrors are designed to empower and elude
viewers who accept their reverse images as a reality. Ultra Violet offers the works of art as “everyone’s self portrait, as
democratic illusion." The mirrors, according to the artist's web site, say, “You are real — you are not real —
but enjoy your illusion.” Ultra Violet will photograph visitors looking into the self-portrait mirror.
Women Who Stand on The Sun from
Antonia Wright on
Vimeo.
Women Who Stand on the Sun
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Antonia Wright, an artist and one of several guest curators of this year's fair, will debut "Women Who Stand on The Sun," the video project she launched during her month-long residency at Lotus House last April. While there, she talked with the other women who were staying at the womens' shelter and launched the series of videos, each of which depicts a pair of upward reaching legs. Between the feet, viewers can see the sun.
It's the same perspective one might get if they laid in the sand, lifted their legs and looked up at their feet and the sunlight beyond them.
"When I moved into the shelter, I knew that I wanted to take videos of the women’s feet," Wright notes on her Vimeo page. "I have heard that the homeless have problems with their feet as they are always walking and standing on them. In the videos it appears that the women are floating and free. The pieces are a tribute to their inner strength and magic. I like the idea that wherever they go, they are always special and walking on the sun."
Sign My Name Project
From a booth she will share with a few other FIU students,
AdrienneRose Gionta will continue her
Sign My Name Project, and also incorporate a few elements from some of her past installations. In other words, expect an experience that is very AdrienneRose Gionta, AdrienneRose Gionta, AdrienneRose Gionta. Remember that name.
Here's how she writes up the show: "Photo ops! Star sightings! Sign her name & pin it to the wall! For one night only, you will be delightfully submerged within the multi-sensory pop up world of AdrienneRose Gionta’s… pink… sparkly… rosy…
neon… seduction with a special appearance by the lovely BBW of your
dreams. Andy Warhol says, 'In the future everybody will be famous for 15
minutes.' ARG says, why only 15 minutes? We are seriously lacking an
adoration, affection & appreciation for our favorite local BB (Big
& Beautiful) self-proclaimed pop-icon. Here is your chance to make
it up to her."
Go forth and sign her name. You'll be glad you did.
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| Misael Soto ... dreaming of crowd surfing. |
Misael Soto is a Dancing Machine
Anyone familiar with
Misael Soto's art will know he's all about the communal experience, even when it comes to (
especially when it comes to) things that some people typically do alone (like go to the beach, listen to their iPods, drive, watch TV, dance as if no one is watching) ... This summer, after several beach towel performative art pieces (i.e. parties), he took his big-ass beach towel on tour, and soon after he was done with that, out came the gigantic picnic blanket.
For Art Live, he's got a bit of the old and the new ... He'll bring back
Would You Like to Dance With Me? which will keep him dancing all through the fair's Friday VIP party with anyone who'd like to dance with him ... no talking necessary. It's all about the dancing.
He'll also collaborate with
Dim Past, Smiling Gums and
Deaf Poets on a show that involves crowd surfing.
As Soto puts it, "
Crowd surfing is a
simple, joyous, unforgettable, and even addicting experience, and yet
many are afraid to do it at concerts, scared to fall or seemingly too
reserved. This piece is a participatory installation that gives visitors
the chance to safely crowd surf during musical performances Saturday
night at Art Live fair... they simply have to take the leap."
He's been recruiting "able-bodied volunteers to take part in some good-old fashioned crowd
surfing!" and also recruiting volunteers who will will be part of the crowd, ready to catch and hold up
those who jump and you'll get to jump too."
If you want to find out how many volunteers came through, well, just jump! The show will start at 8 p.m. Saturday.
Revised Twice-Fried Plantains( MP4) from
Ania Moussawel on
Vimeo.
The Video Lounge
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| A still from Ania Moussawel's video, Twice Fried Plantains |
• Art Live 2012 will also include, for the first time ever, a video lounge with a weekend program that will include
Monika Bravo's A Window of Time [Monday,
Teresa Diehl's WASH, Jason Lockyer's Tom,
Lauren Kelley's Froufrou Conclusions,
Lindsay Scoggins' Tsunami, an untitled video by
Brookhart Jonquil and Ania Moussawel's Twice Fried Plantains (see above)
,
In her video, Moussawel, who uses photography and video to explore her Cuban and Lebanese heritage and themes of family, memory, and loss, says she researched and reenacted cooking rituals from her Cuban background to strengthen her connection to family and honors those who have passed.
All of the videos in the program are silent videos.
Need to know:
Art
Live 2012 kicks off with a launch party from 8-11 p.m. Friday (evening
pass), and continues 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday (day pass) and 6-11 p.m.
Saturday (evening pass) and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday (day pass). Day
passes (good until 5 p.m.) are $10, $5 for children under 13 and free
for children under 3. Evening passes are $20.
A fair pass that include
all three days and nights is $50, and $250 will get you VIP access to
all fair events including a VIP party (with a silent auction to
benefit Lotus House) that runs 5:30 to 8 p.m. Friday. For more info on tickets or all of the other artists participating in the event, call 786-300-9840 or visit
Art Live 2012,
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