Leilani Lynch’s Top Picks | Miami Beach 2020
UNTITLED, ART is pleased to introduce a new series of curated selections from the art fair. Cultural tastemakers, international curators, gallerists, and local collectors will be tapped to share their picks from the Online Viewing Rooms of UNTITLED, ART Miami Beach 2020.
Today’s highlighted selection comes from Leilani Lynch, Curator at The Bass Museum of Art in Miami. Read on to learn more about her highlights from the fair, and why each caught her attention.
Suchitra Mattai, Alter Ego, acrylic, embroidery floss, vintage sari, fabric, appliques, brush, 2020.
On View with K Contemporary, Booth C8.
Combining elements across time and geographies into her work, Suchitra Mattai creates rich visual dialogues that investigate the re/telling of periods of colonial history and forced migration in connection with personal stories from this artist’s Indo-Caribbean family. In Alter Ego (2020), Mattai combines found materials with applique and intricate painting to render visible the often disparate, yet intertwined cultures and histories she investigates. There’s so much depth in the details of this work.
Petra Cortright, arte+historia+Sociedad_astalavista.box.sk, digital painitng on anodized aluminum, 2019.
On View with C O U N T Y, Booth B11.
Petra Cortright’s work adapts painting to the digital age. In arte+historia+Sociedad_astalavista.box.sk (2019), what at first glance may look akin to an impressionist painting, is a digital collage; a fractured landscape of found images is marked by broad, expressionistic gestures.
Marielle Plaisir, A. Franklin, The Malediction of Cham, Acrylics, inks, Hand made embroidery on canvas, 2020.
On View with De Buck Gallery, Booth A9.
Marielle Plaisir’s A. Franklin, The Malediction of Cham (2020) is part of new series that pays homage to important Black figures, here evoking the persona of Aretha Franklin within a whimsical landscape. The work deftly balances lightness and gravity, between the feathery brushstroked forms, and the grided top section, as well as the thin chain-like garland that, upon closer inspection, one finds is embroidered by puncturing the canvas.
Edra Soto, Open 24 Hours, Found glass bottles of liquor, MDF, 2018.
On View with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Booth A8.
Edra Soto’s work Open 24 Hours (2018), straddles boundaries between sculpture and design in a way that feels familiar and playful, especially from my Miami-based context. The work’s title, Open 24 Hours, also adds a secondary reading the sculptures, alluding to convenience stores and commerce.
Kambui Olujimi, No Belts No Laces, Metal, plastic, faux pearls, and copper leaf, 2017.
On View with Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Booth A8.
Kambui Olujimi’s No Belts No Laces (2017), physically and conceptually links different forms of denomination and exertions of power, both consensual and not. With materials such as plastic and metal handcuffs and jewelry chains and bangles, Olujimi enmeshes notions of kink and imprisonment in a type of cartography of migration and displacement.
UNTITLED, ART Miami Beach OVR is open December 2–6, 2020.
