Miami, FL – Nov. 18, 2019 – The Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) at Miami Dade College (MDC) will celebrate Miami Art Week with a series of public programs and events Dec. 4 – 6. MOAD’s The schedule will feature guided nap meditations and DJ soundscapes within the Black Power Naps / Siestas Negras installation, led by artists Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa; a panel discussion with Guillermina De Ferrari, Erica Moiah James, Alfredo Perez-Triff and Rina Carvajal; a Platonic Play Party workshop incorporating movement, sound, and discussion with the Black Power Naps / Siestas Negras installation; and invitation-only Miami Art Week brunch.
2019 MOAD Miami Art Week Events:
Black Power Naps / Siestas Negras Guided Nap Meditations and DJ Soundscapes by Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa
Wednesday, Dec. 4, from 12 – 2 p.m.
Black Power Naps/Siestas Negras is a multi-sensory, interactive installation designed to provide joyful and relaxing relief from fatiguing systems of inequality. Black Power Naps/Siestas Negras invites visitors to lounge on a variety of embellished beds, replete with gauzy canopies, serene lighting, therapeutic sound vibrations, and other restorative props. Correlating the exhaustion tactics once used to subjugate slaves with contemporary systems of exploitation and erosive fatigue, artists Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa offer this “energetic repair” as a way to “reclaim laziness and idleness as power” for those historically deprived of it. On Wednesday, December 4, the artists invite visitors to a mid-day break within the installation, where they will perform guided nap meditations and DJ soundscapes from bed.
Panel discussion with Guillermina De Ferrari, Erica Moiah James, and Alfredo Perez-Triff, moderated by Rina Carvajal
Thursday, Dec. 5, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Designed for those immersed in the writing of Cabrera and Glissant, as well as those encountering their work for the first time, this panel discussion is an opportunity to dive deeper into specific ideas, terms, or passages developed by the scholars who inspired Where the Oceans Meet. Each panelist will give a brief but illuminating presentation on a single topic and then engage in a lively group discussion to forge meaningful connections between their interpretations and the broader notions uniting works in the exhibition.
Black Power Naps / Siestas Negras Platonic Play Party workshop
Thursday, Dec. 5, from 5 to 8 p.m.
On Thursday, Dec. 5, Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa invite visitors to a Platonic Play Party workshop, an event exploring platonic touch that the artists believe will ultimately encourage better rest.
Miami Art Week VIP Brunch
Friday, Dec. 6, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Invitation only (open to working media)
MOAD presents its second annual Miami Art Week brunch, an invitation-only event reserved for MOAD members and Miami Dade College leadership; Art Basel Miami Beach, Art Miami, Aqua, Context, Pinta, Prizm, and Untitled VIP passholders; and select media. In celebration of one of the most anticipated art events of the year, MOAD will welcome guests for a Creole brunch, inspired by its Where the Oceans Meet exhibition. During the event, artists Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa will activate Black Power Naps / Siestas Negras with guided nap meditations and DJ soundscapes from bed.
Art Exhibition
May 26, 2019 – Jan. 12, 2020
Where the Oceans Meet an exhibition of modern and contemporary art that resonates with the pioneering thought of two Caribbean writers, Lydia Cabrera and Édouard Glissant. The international group of 40 artists and collectives in the exhibition considers notions of shifting and porous borders—geographic, national, cultural, social, racial, ethnic, and linguistic—and how crossing borders has shaped our world. Where the Oceans Meet be on view through Jan. 12, 2020.
Organized by MOAD and Americas Society, New York, Where the Oceans Meet is curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Asad Raza, Gabriela Rangel, and Rina Carvajal. The exhibition is made possible by the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, and the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners. MOAD gratefully acknowledge the collaboration of the Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami Libraries; Diana Flatto, Assistant Curator of Visual Arts, Americas Society; Jose Antonio Navarrete; and Nadia Naami; as well as the generosity of all the lenders to the exhibition.
BIOS
Navild Acosta is an award-winning multi-medium artist and activist based in Berlin. His work has been performed at Matadero Madrid, Tate Modern, Tanz Im August & Kunst-Werke Institut, Wiener Festwochen, The David Roberts Foundation, The Kimmel Center, Human Resources, MOMA PS1, Studio Museum, New Museum, and McGill University, among other institutions. He has collaborated with Alicia Keys, Anohni, Deborah Hay, Lyle Ashton-Harris, and Ralph Lemon and been featured in publications including Performance Journal, VICE, Out Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine, Apogee Journal, and BOMB Magazine.
Fannie Sosa is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and activist working on a doctorate degree in Gender and Social Science at Lille III University. Sosa has been featured in Dazed Magazine, i-D, Noisey, Paper Magazine, Style Like U, Berlin art link, Schön Magazine, Afro-punk, The Fader, and Gal-Dem. Sosa’s texts have published in The 3D Additivist Cookbook, Arcadia Missa, and Mousonturm. Sosa has had performances produced by Tate Modern, Matadero Madrid, and Wiener Festwochen. She has also collaborated with artists Tabita Rezaire, Ana Pi, Poussy Draama, Bearcat, Spoek Mathambo, and Kirikoo DEs.
Guillermina De Ferrari is a professor of Spanish American and Caribbean Literatures and Cultures at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is the author of Vulnerable States: Bodies of Memory in Contemporary Caribbean Fiction (Virginia, 2007) and Community and Culture in Post-Soviet Cuba (Routledge, 2014). She has published many articles on Cuban and Caribbean literature, visual culture, photography, and world literature. She directed the Center for Visual Cultures (2014–18) and curated the exhibition Apertura: Photography in Cuba Today at the Chazen Museum of Art in 2015. She is co-editor with Ursula Heise of the Routledge series Literature and Contemporary Thought. She is currently working on a book tentatively entitled Community Under Duress that explores the possibility of ethics in precarious conditions. By combining concepts of moral philosophy, disaster studies, and Glissant’s Poetics of Relation, this book project studies the aesthetic elaboration of the tension between overdetermination by historical, political, and ecological forces, and the demand for individual ethical stances toward one another, one’s history, and the viability of a livable planet. She is currently a Senior Fellow with the Institute of Research in the Humanities (2018–22).
Erica Moiah James is an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami. Previously, she taught at Yale University, and was the founding Director and Chief Curator of the National Art Gallery of The Bahamas (NAGB). Her publications include, “Speaking in Tongues: Metapictures and the Discourse of Violence in Caribbean Art” (Small Axe, 2012); “Dreams of Utopia: Sustaining Art Institutions in the Transnational Caribbean” (Open Arts Journal, 2016); “Every Nigger Is a Star: Reimagining Blackness from Post-Civil Rights America to the Postindependence Caribbean” (Black Camera, 2016); and “Charles White’s J’Accuse and the Limits of Universal Blackness” (AAAJ, 2016). She recently coedited a special issue of Small Axe titled Art as Caribbean Feminist Practice (March 2017). James’s curatorial projects and essays include R. Brent Malone: Reincarnation: A Retrospective Exhibition (1954–2004) (NAGB, 2015); “Sun Splashed” for the exhibition Nari Ward: Sun Splashed (Perez Art Museum Miami, 2015); Caribbean Queer Visualities (Belfast, 2016, and Glasgow, 2017); and “Graham Fagen: Opus V” for the exhibition Graham Fagen: The Slave’s Lament (Galerie de l’UQAM, Université du Québec à Montréal, 2017). Her forthcoming book is titled After Caliban: Caribbean Art in the Global Imaginary.
Alfredo Perez-Triff is a professor at MDC and a lecturer in modern and contemporary art history at the University of Miami. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and a master’s degree in music composition from the University of Miami. Since 1999, he has been the art critic for the weekly newspaper Miami New Times, in which he has published more than 150 contributions.
Rina Carvajal is the Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) at MDC. Previously, she was visiting curator at the Instituto de Arte Contemporanea (IAC) in São Paulo, the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the Instituto Moreira Salles in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the adjunct curator at the Perez Art Museum Miami. Carvajal served as the Executive Director and Chief Curator of Miami Art Central; was twice co-curator of the São Paulo Biennial; and was the Ahmanson Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
ABOUT MOAD AT MDC
Located in Miami’s National Historic Landmark Freedom Tower, the Museum of Art and Design (MOAD) at MDC offers groundbreaking exhibitions and programs that aim to foster a reimagined Miami. Exploring the challenges and opportunities we face locally and globally, MOAD convenes artists, designers, and thinkers to address the urgent questions of our time. As the flagship museum of Miami Dade College, MOAD strives to be a catalyst for action and a place that empowers people to remake their city. MOAD follows the College’s lead in operating across Miami with its Museum Without Boundaries initiative, which takes place in city neighborhoods and invites everyone to be a part of the conversation.
WHAT: Miami Art Week at MOAD
WHEN: Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 12 p.m. (Guided nap meditations and DJ soundscapes in Black Power Naps / Siestas Negras)
Thursday, Dec. 5, at 10:30 a.m. (panel discussion on Where the Oceans Meet exhibition)
Thursday, Dec. 5, at 5 p.m. (Platonic Play Party workshop)
Friday, Dec. 6, at 9 a.m. (VIP Miami Art Week brunch)
WHERE: Museum of Art and Design at MDC
Freedom Tower
600 Biscayne Boulevard, Second Floor
Museum Hours: Wednesday 1 – 6 p.m.; Thursday 1 – 8 p.m.; Friday–Sunday 1– 6 p.m.
Museum admission: $12 adults; $8 seniors and military; $5 students (13–17) and college students (with valid ID); free for MOAD members, MDC students, faculty, and staff, and children 12 and under. Accessibility challenges: please call (305) 237-7710 for details.
For updates and a full schedule of events, please visit http://www.mdcmoad.org/.
Press Contacts: Nicole Martinez, Marketing and Membership Manager, 305-237-7719, nmartin1@mdc.edu; JWI PR—Jessica Wade Pfeffer: 305-804-8424, jessica@jwipr.com; or Juliana Gutierrez: 305-991-4259, juliana@jwipr.com.