The non-profit organisation Faena Art, which was founded by the Argentine art collector, real estate developer and hotelier Alan Faena, celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.
Long before the Faena District in Miami existed, the organisation established a presence in Buenos Aires with the launch of the Faena Art Center in 2011. Its first commission—curated by Jessica Morgan, the current director of the Dia Art Foundation and previously a curator at Tate Modern—was an immersive exhibition by the Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto that engulfed the space with colourful textile webs.
The first stateside commissions in Miami Beach in 2015 featured works by Ragnar Kjartansson, Jim Denevan and others. The annual initiative officially became the Faena Festival in 2018—a free arts festival coinciding with Art Basel in Miami Beach that is hosted across the Faena Forum, the Faena Hotel, the streets and the beach.
“It had always been my dream to have an international cultural festival—a polyphonic platform to amplify voices and bring together practitioners from different artistic fields,” Faena says. The organisation itself was “born in the spirit of collaboration and to make art accessible to all, conceived as a bridge between the local and the global [to] be a shelter to the artistic community”.
The inaugural US edition of the Faena Prize for the Arts—a $75,000 award launched in Buenos Aires in 2012—has been awarded to the emerging digital artist Pilar Zeta. Her commission Halls of Vision (2021) will be the centrepiece of the annual festival, consisting of a site-specific installation that alludes to Argentina’s Madí movement and honours the legacy of Art Deco in Miami Beach.
Below are some of Faena Art’s most exciting commissions from the past ten years.
2020: Alexandre Arrechea, Dreaming With Lions (2020). Miami Art Week was cancelled last year due to the pandemic, but Faena Art did install a monumental site-specific work by Alexandre Arrechea on the beach; the work honoured Ernest Hemingway and the force of the human spirit © Oriol Tarridas; courtesy of Faena Art
2019: Mobile video installations and open-air cinema series. The festival repurposed the LED billboards that float past Miami Beach emblazoned with advertisements to display video installations and films by artists including Ana Mendieta, Janine Antoni, Jamilah Sabur and Faith Ringgold Jillian Mayer © Oriol Tarridas Photography; courtesy of Faena Art
2019: Jim Denevan, A Common Circle (2019). Part of the season’s focus on food and ritual, the artist created an atmospheric event that aimed to underscore the importance of gathering with others Courtesy of Faena Art
2018: George Sánchez-Calderón, How to Win Friends and Influence People (2018). The artist set fire to a facsimile of the Cape Cod model home, a development introduced in the late 1940s that ushered in the rise of suburban development that became emblematic of the American dream © Oriol Tarridas Photography; Courtesy of Faena Art
2018: Alfredo Jaar, A Logo for America (2018). Alfredo Jaar floated this electronic billboard on Miami Beach, recreating his famous 1987 Public Art Fund commission in Times Square. The work marked the first official edition of the Faena Festival, which explored sociopolitical division © Oriol Tarridas Photography; courtesy of Faena Art
2017: Phillip K. Smith III, 120 Degree Arc East-Southeast (2017). This work merged the ocean, the land and the sky, consisting of a mirrored cove that expanded on a work commissioned for the Desert X biennial in 2017 Courtesy of Faena Art
2016: Celeste Fraser Delgado & Damián Rojo, Carnival Arts (2016). Part of the season’s focus on performance and dance, this mini carnival procession brought together artists and the community—from shelters to high schools—for a project that honoured African diasporic music and art MBUSA Event Photos; courtesy of Faena Art
2015: Almudena Lobera, A Sight to Behold (2011). The Spanish artist Almudena Lobera framed the ocean with a red theatre curtain, inviting visitors to meditate on the spectacle of the natural world while blurring the boundaries between the observers and the observed Courtesy of Faena Art