MIAMI, FL.- Miami Art Museum is commissioning works by four renowned international artists to be presented at the Museum’s reopening as Pérez Art Museum Miami in its new Herzog & de Meuron-designed facility in December 2013. The artists, Yael Bartana (b. 1970, Kfar Yehezkel, Israel), Bouchra Khalili (b. 1975, Casablanca, Morocco), Hew Locke (b. 1959, Edinburgh, Scotland) and Monika Sosnowska (b. 1972, Ryki, Poland), are among the leading contemporary artists working around the world today. Each artist will explore Miami and engage with its cultural community in a year-long creative process designed to encourage the creation of new work, cultural exchange, and public interaction with the artists and Museum. The installations will be on view in the new Museum’s expanded exhibition space, and the Museum will look to acquire them for its permanent collection.
“MAM is dedicated to strengthening the cultural and creative community here in Miami by developing programming that allows for a deeper, more meaningful interaction between artists, the public and the museum,” said Thom Collins, MAM’s director. “We are also committed to engaging with artists, creators and thinkers from around the globe, connecting our local experience with those across the world and solidifying Miami’s role as a major cultural catalyst.”
Over the course of the next 12 months, each of the four artists will visit Miami several times to engage with the city’s culture and local artist community. The artists will also participate in public discussions at the museum to encourage community interest and interaction with their creative processes. While learning about and connecting with the city and deepening relationships with local individuals and organizations are integral aspects of the year-long process, the artists’ work does not have to directly reflect or represent Miami. In December 2013, Bartana, Khalili, Locke, and Sosnowska will present their new work during the opening of Pérez Art Museum Miami.
2012 Artist Commissions:
Yael Bartana is among the foremost artists of her generation. Her works in video, film, photography, and installation explore identity through investigations of ceremonies, public rituals, and cultural practices. Her video work, both documentary and staged, looks at social phenomena that illuminate the complexity of contemporary life and politics, particularly in her native country of Israel.
Bouchra Khalili’s works, which take the form of single- and multi-channel videos and films as well as photographs, employ a mode of poetic documentation to investigate the experiences of identity, immigration, and transience. Reflecting the nomadic and often transnational state of existence that defines life for many people throughout the world, Khalili illuminates the realities, emotional, intellectual, and tangible, of an increasingly mobilized world.
Hew Locke is a visual artist working in a range of media including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, textile and collage. While his work deals with a diverse subject matter, recurrent themes include visual expressions of power, trophy, globalization, migration, ships and boats, and the creation of culture.
Monika Sosnowska is one of the most celebrated Eastern European artists working today. Her work explores the politics and poetics of the built environment, engaging and transforming the architecture of the exhibition space, often in implausible ways. She is best known for large, site-specific sculptures made of industrial materials such as steel and concrete, as well as surreal, tableau-like installations.
