UNTITLED, ART Names Four Guest Curators for Miami Beach Fair

Natasha Becker and Miguel A. López will select galleries to explore two themes.

At least 18 art fairs took place during Miami Art Week in 2019. UNTITLED, ART hopes to differentiate itself with a highly curated selection of galleries and artists when it returns in December.

Four guest curators have been named for the event's tenth edition, which will take place in person in Miami Beach from 30 November to 5 December.

'We have invited guest curators to guide a presentation that honors UNTITLED, ART's ongoing support of diverse voices, both historical and contemporary,' said Omar López-Chahoud, the fair's artistic director.

Natasha Becker, curator of African art at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and Miguel A. Lopez, former co-director and chief curator of TEOR/éTica in San José, Costa Rica, will select participating galleries based on their applications and how they align with two curatorial themes: 'South by South' and performance.

'The Global South no longer refers to geography and nation states but to spaces and peoples negatively impacted by contemporary capitalist globalisation, the global art market, global environmental disasters and global viruses,' Becker said. 'I'm excited to curate an experiment in juxtaposition that attempts to transcend both geopolitics and a bipolar narrative of North and South.'

López, who has worked mostly with artists from Central America and the Caribbean, will set aside geography to focus on performance.

'My curatorial contribution will be an exploration on how body movement, choreography and performativity offer other ways to reconsider ideas about citizenship, the public, collective memory, belonging and agency,' he said.

Mega-collector Estrellita Brodsky and Boston University lecturer José Falconi will also collaborate on a group exhibition promoting the work of Latin American artists at the fair. Brodsky's Chelsea gallery Another Space has shown artists from the region such as Allora and Calzadilla, Ana Mendieta, Adrián Villar Rojas, Guadalupe Maravilla, and Firelei Báez, who just won Britain's Artes Mundi Prize.

Nearly 40,000 people visited UNTITLED, ART's online viewing rooms last year, which featured 59 galleries, down from 129 at the in-person event in 2019. —[O]