Fair. at Brickell City Centre
Providing a fresh platform for historical and contemporary works by radical feminist artists, Fair. was a new offering during this year’s Miami Art Week; mounted in the unconventional setting of a shopping mall.
As with most art and design events throughout the year, Miami Art Week is awash with a growing number of satellite showcases and events. Navigating through the wide slew of offerings has become an endeavour in and of itself. Breaking the mould and standing out amongst the rest this year was Fair. (7-10 December). The non-commercial exhibition took-up-shop in the unconventional context of a mall – the recently opened Brickell City Centre – to spotlight installation-based works by some of the most revered female artists, who continue to explore the ever-more-relevant issues of gender-inequality within the creative realm.
Fair. was mounted by Miami-based Faena Art curator Zoe Lukov and Spinello Projects founder Anthony Spinello, who carefully considered how activist and feminist art should be presented in this day and age. Conducive with the nature of the works on view, the showcase was made open to the public without a fee. It also adopted equitable W.A.G.E guidelines for those involved.
Monumental statement-based works and performances were spread out across the expansive and multi-storied venue. The Guerrilla Girls presented four site-specific billboards including their historic Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get into the Met Museum piece. Visitors were also able to add a message of hope to Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree for Peace Installation. Mico Hebron installed the impactful Gallery Tally work – an expansive series of 500 crowd-sourced posters that revealed the unbalanced ratio of women versus male artists represented in art galleries around the world. Immersive, interactive, and visually provocative works were brought together in a damning yet optimistic survey; a revealing look at contemporary conditions in an increasingly difficult political, social and cultural context.
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