A visual review of Miami Art Week 2023 as captured by Julie Walker.
REGINALD O’NEAL
The Cellist, 2023
EPS Foam, Polyurethane paint and topcoat, 120 x 66 x 66 in.
Spinello Projects
A monumental sculptural installation ‘The Cellist’ in the Meridians sector of Basel. Reginald O’neill is a Miami artist from Overtown.
Someone did mention some controversy to me over it reminding them of a lawn Jockey. I don’t see that at all. This is his first large-scale sculpture, which comes from a series of smaller-scale paintings that represent figurines. The figure is turning his back to the audience, which is a very “political move.”
WANGARI MATHENGE
The Ascendants XXII (Ambivalence)
2023
Oil on canvas 63×63 in.
Roberts Projects
Always loved art, and painting was a hobby. She became a lawyer then became an artist after putting some work on Instagram and getting noticed. She is from Kenya. She got her MFA is 2021 from Art Institute Chicago.
LAUREN HALSEY
Untitled, 2023
Watercolor ink, colored pencil, and collage on gypsum with hand carving
Gagosian.
“It’s not just about the future it’s about here and now too.” —Lauren Halsey
Based in South Central Los Angeles in 1987, where her family has lived for generations, Lauren Halsey creates immersive installations that bridge sculpture and architecture, and graphically maximalist collages that blend real and imagined geographies. She recontextualizes and reinterprets local vernacular sources such as flyers, murals, signs, and tags—icons of pride, autonomy, initiative, and resilience. Both celebrating Black cultural expressions and archiving them, Halsey’s work offers a form of creative resistance to the forces of gentrification. In addition to the signs and symbols of contemporary South Central, the artist employs the iconography of ancient Egypt as a means of reclaiming lost legacies. She is also inspired by the Afrofuturist aesthetics of funk music and the utopian architecture proposed in the 1960s by Archigram and Superstudio.
Halsey earned a BFA from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA from Yale University in 2014. In 2018, she presented ‘We still here’, there at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. A cavernous installation of cement illuminated in many bright and iridescent colored surfaces, it was filled with figurines, objects, signage, incense, and oils, acting as a historical storehouse for South Central’s material culture. The following year, Halsey’s first solo exhibition in Europe, ‘Too Blessed 2 be Stressed!’ at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, featured an immersive environment of objects linking diasporic cultures from Los Angeles to Paris. In 2021, Halsey was commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to produce a series of banners combining contemporary images from her neighborhood with ancient Egyptian and Nubian works from the museum’s collection.
DAVID SHROBE
NAVIGATORS, 2019-21
Oil, acrylic, graphite, charcoal, piano keys, flocking, rubber, wood, canvas, fabric, silver leaf, cold roll steel, book cloth, and mixed media.
69 x 54 x 2 ½ in.
Monique Meloche
SHEENA ROSE, 2023
Believe in Yourself
Acrylic on canvas
50×60 in.
Johansson Projects
Sheena lives and works in Barbados where she’s from. She paints, performs and involved with mixed media.
A series of black women in sports including surfer, jokeys, divers and of course, Serena and Venus who later bought, even though it was Serena who apparently showed up in Miami for the Fair, as Venus could not make it but saw the image and snatched it up.
The art features vibrant colours, the lack of real faces, which is deliberate and the hair which is a power statement.
LEROY JOHNSON
Temple, 2000
Mixed media, found object, collage 14 × 12 × 16 in.
West Philly (Porches), 2016 Mixed media, found object, collage 15 × 18 × 16 in.
Untitled (Cash for Your Home), 2005 Mixed media, found object, collage 8 × 9 × 11 in.
Margot Samel
LEROY JOHNSON
First Responder, 2019
Collage Mixed Media
18 x 24 in.
Margot Samel Gallery
CALEB KWARTENG PRAH
First Dance, 2023
Photograph: Fujiflex print
Nil Gallery
Born and works in Ghana, and blends street photography with personal archives. His father was a man of the cloth. Work is meant to convey a joyful image of Africa.
This is an edition of five, and I believe there are 2 artists proofs. Chris Rock owns one.
MONICA IKEGWU
Kori x Olivia, 2023
Oil on canvas
60×48 in.
Band Of Vices
$30K
Baltimore painter, born raised with a Nigerian dad.
Mid 20’s
Basic portraiture but looks at the detail in the eyes and how she treats them. Gallerist is a black man from California.
JOSEPH EZE, 2022
Construction Site7
Acrylic, newspaper, giftwrap, and foil on canvas
48 x 48 in.
Doziearts
$9,500
Sold Galerist black Vincent Ugokwe his artist are mainly African.
Eze, Nigerian born 75 makes him 48.
Uses conventional and found materials.
Work examines identity nostalgia and stereotype.
MAXWELL PEARCE
Win
Sports equipment collage
N’Namdi Gallery
This is Harlem Globetrotter Maxwell Pearce who premiered his first art exhibit “Art of the Athlete,” at the N’Namdi Gallery in Little Haiti. His art was born from an incident when a banana was thrown at him, around the time of George Floyd. So it was protest art in a way. His process gets away from drawing and painting. This is part of the Art of Black initiative created by The Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau.
“I had a racial experience while giving a live interview,” Pearce said. “A banana was thrown at me. Basically, the implication is that Black people are monkeys. It’s a very egregious, historical trope.
During the 2020 shutdowns, Maxwell, who is self-taught, found a way to channel those hate-filled messages.
“My response to that was I’m going to make it even more of a teachable moment, that highlights athletes in past and present to use their platform to speak out against injustice,” he said.
The results are powerful mixed-used pieces. Some 12 in all.
“Wilma” pays homage to 1960’s Olympic Sprinting Champion Wilma Rudolph. It’s made out of different colored shoestrings.
She was responsible for the first integrative event in Clarksville, Tennessee.
BY: Julie Walker (@jwalkreporter).
SOURCE: Ludlow Bailey.
****ALL CONTENT / IMAGES USED WITH THE PERMISSION OF LUDLOW BAILEY AND THE CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DIASPORA ART (CADA). FOR MORE INFORMATION, KINDLY VISIT: www.cada.us.