Art Basel Miami Helped Me Get Over My Daddy Issues

By Anna Mikaela Ekstrand Anna Mikaela Ekstrand has been verified by Muck Rack's editorial team
Published on December 11, 2022

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Miami Art Week. What started out as the Swiss art fair Art Basel’s off-shoot in Miami, named Art Basel Miami, has evolved into a full-scale week of various fairs and events.

As art has become a mainstream commodity and its industry parties and lifestyle have become en vogue, the week has continued to grow in popularity. It now attracts entrepreneurs, hip techies (yes, they exist), and movers-and-shakers from other industries searching for investments, art, and a good time. The main fair, Art Basel, presents the works with the highest prices. Sometimes, though, the most interesting work is found elsewhere. My top selections this year reflect on global politics, self discovery, and the art market itself.

Miami Kelly DAbbah
Installation view. Kelly Dabbah: “Daddy’s Issues” SCOPE Miami 2022. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

Kelly Dabbah: “Daddy’s Issues” presented by Saphira & Ventura at SCOPE

 In her playful showcase, New York-based interdisciplinary artist Kelly Dabbah presents a large-scale mirror (49’’x90’’) and antIque chair reupholstered in her signature collage pattern design. Together the works explore the trope by introducing the term: ‘Daddy’s Issues.’  “It’s about the relationship between your heart and your mind, the carefully curated and constructed, imagined identity and the uninhibited soul, what someone is supposed to do versus what the heart wants. The mirror is also here to show fragments of your focus and your reflectIon, including every projectIon and recurring rejectIon, whether you like it or not,” says Dabbah about her showcase. Her Middle Eastern heritage and interest in the region’s rich traditions in decoratIve arts have influenced her maximalist approach to patterns and detail. Her digital collages are printed layer-by-layer on mirrors,  combining brightly colored photographs of friends, her own paintings, and other found imagery. It is an invitation to the viewer to renegotiate their relatIonship to our media saturated culture.

“Daddy’s Issues” is Dabbah’s second showcase at SCOPE. Having followed her work for some time, I am impressed by how she works across art, music, and fashion industries. She isforging her own path between activations and work with brands to bring immersive experiences to the white cube. Dabbah’s upcoming collaboratIons include Sadowsky Guitars, Nothing New, and Cami & Jax bathing suits.

Alina Yakirevitch, “Mishka,” 2022. Mixed material. Photograph courtesy of the artist.

Alina Yakirevitch’s “Mishka” presented by P.A.D at NADA

“Mishka” is a work with many layers. The title refers to the Russian bar mascot during the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Russian emigre artist Alina Yakirevitchh is thought-provoking, and fiercely political. This type of theoretical work is more common in a biennial than in an art fair. Installed in the garden of New Art Dealers Alliance, it merits a stop, perhaps a sea in the grass, for reflection. 

Yakirevitch’s sculpture “Mishka” is timely as it attempts to process patriarchy, and politics while investigating how Putin’s war affects us on a personal and familial level. Meditating on a therapist’s leather chair, the sculpture consists of a disassembled leather chair—leather pieces flattened and sewed onto a shipping pad—like a melted body, a hunter’s animal hide, or a crucifix. Look closely and you will see a picture of Vladimir Putin peaking out of the torn leather. “A little devil peeking out of the hole,” says the artist. Much of Yakirevitch’s work is about archetypes. She left Russia for Israel in the ’90s, but all of her mother’s family is in Russia and in denial about the war, which pains her.

Putin is to blame. “I am dealing with him as an archetype–as an angry father figure–a Jewish father who is, like many Jewish men, very feminine,” she says. She chose the therapist’s chair as a metaphor for authority but also to highlight that therapy is a forum where people face, overcome, or succumb to the evil inside them. An accomplished artist, her work has also been exhibited at Tel Aviv Museum, and she has produced two of Roee Rosen’s films, one a commission for Documenta14. 

Al Freeman Miami
Al Freeman Jr. ”Soft Interest,” 2022. Vinyl. 40 x 33 x 1 in (101.6 x 83.8 x 2.5 cm). Photograph courtesy of 56 Henry.
Jo Messer Miami
Above: Installation view. Jo Messer. Header image: Installation view. Clayton Schiff. Both at the Rubell Museum. Both November 28, 2022 – December 12, 2023. Photographs courtesy of the Rubell Museum.

Jo Messer and Clayton Schiff Museum Debuts and Work at 56 Henry

Work presented by 56 Henry at NADA and two solo-exhibitions at Rubell Museum

The hands-down standout piece at the booth is Al Freeman Jr.’s vinyl work “Soft Interest”, which displays the text ‘0% INTEREST’ with effect. I am seriously considering DMing it to my ex. You might know Freeman Jr. for her large-scale soft wall sculptures of everyday objects, such as extension cords, cigarettes, and jewelry. Her image comparisons on Instagram are obscure deep dives into pop culture.

Matching artists in museum shows with their work at galleries is a fun exercise for gaining more depth to a reading and understanding of an artist’s market. Jo Messer and Clayton Schiff, two of 56 Henry’s New York-based artists, debut with solo-shows at the Rubell Museum, while also showing at the galleries booth at NADA. LA-born artist Jo Messer’s paintings of women offer multiplicities, potentials, and agency to their subjects, whose limbs extend beyond the canvas amidst familiar objects.

Messer’s titles are mysterious declarations, poetic and narrative. From her solo-exhibtion at the Rubell Museum:

  • “She is afraid of nothing, especially not the sun”
  • “Something new comes along”
  • Walk-in through the back

The paintings are a beautiful balancing act in vibrant colors, tethered between erotic and absurd, abstraction and figuration. They remind me of unapologetic feminism of the 90s, Kathy Acker-esque, messy but poignant and liberating. Compared to Messer, the work of Clayton Schiff has a sense of stillness, scenes captured in time. “Crossing” at NADA simply captures two figures as they cross each other. Although in motion, there is something intangible and strange, nearly immobile about the painting. The exhibition at Rubell seems to channel dreamscapes or memories, presenting a compelling disconnect between the viewer and what is depicted on canvas. 

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By Anna Mikaela Ekstrand Anna Mikaela Ekstrand has been verified by Muck Rack's editorial team

Anna Mikaela Ekstrand is a Grit Daily columnist, an art critic, and a cultural strategist. She is the founder of Cultbytes, an online art publication and culture-focused communications agency. She is also the Associate Director of The Immigrant Artist Biennial and is curating its 2023 edition. Anna Mikaela has held curatorial positions at the Metropolitan Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, Solomon R. Guggenheim, and Bard Graduate Center. She holds dual Master’s Degrees in Art and Design History from Stockholm University and Bard Graduate Center.

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