Hands, Hickeys, and Hurly-Burly
Art Basel leaves its mark on Wynwood
By Carlos Suarez De Jesus Published: December 14, 2006
During Art Basel Miami Beach last year, Lilian Fernandez was crestfallen that none of her abstract paintings was on display at any of the fairs' events or exhibits.
To cope with her depression, she ritualistically ripped one of her canvases, The Flowers That My Mother Painted, into 38 envelope-size sections, wrote the title of the work and her information on the back of them, and handed them out to strangers at the Miami Beach Convention Center, hoping her luck would change.
"I did it as a cleansing, sending the work out into the world sort of like a message in a bottle that people toss into the ocean, dreaming of a response in the future," the Cuban artist said. "My hope was that this year I would have the opportunity to exhibit my work during the fair and that the people I gave the pieces to would remember my performance."
During the past several months, Fernandez peppered Miami with flyers bearing images of her shredded painting, offering anyone who returned the pieces a reward. She did so as part of an effort to restore the work for her Basel project at the recently opened GIL Art Gallery in Wynwood.
Even though Fernandez still found herself a world away from the glitz and glamour of the convention center big top, by early Friday, some of the strangers she encountered last year had shown up with six sections of the painting. She exchanged them for one of her works. "I wanted to reconstruct the piece as part of the cycle. The response has been humbling," Fernandez said, adding with a laugh that instead of her going to Basel, it was now coming to her.
Despite the hundreds of artists scattered in and around the convention center and the smattering of small fairs on the Beach this past weekend, many collectors in town for Art Basel seemed to be sinking their attention and cash into Wynwood. I stuck to the hood to see what all the hurly-burly was about. ..............