All-women art fair at Brickell City Center is non-commercial protest Fair aims to exchange feminist ideas, not objects

All-women art fair at Brickell City Center is non-commercial protest

Fair aims to exchange feminist ideas, not objects

^{By Andrea Torres}

^12/09/2017

MIAMI - When Juana Valdés was a little girl in Cabañas, a village about an hour away from Havana, she didn't know she was living in poverty. Everybody was poor. She said she also didn't know that being black put her at a disadvantage. She learned that while growing up in Miami.
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Valdés, 54, remembers being part of the Freedom Flights, a U.S. resettlement program that brought political refugees from the Communist island from 1965 to 1973. She was eight. Her mom worked as a seamstress. Her dad did manual labor.
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There wasn't much of an art scene when she was a teen in Miami, so she knew she had to move to New York if she wanted to pursue her dream. She studied at Parsons School of Design and has been exhibiting her art work since 1994, but she had never been a part of something like the Fair, a show in Brickell that will be open this weekend during Art Basel Miami Beach.
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"The Fair has a powerful message and it's no coincidence that is at this mall where marketers objectify women," said the Afro-Cuban-American artist, who teaches at the University of Massachusetts. "Gender inequality is a reflection of a patriarchal society. Think about it: Why should women have to be young and beautiful to be valued? Women who aren't and are living in poverty are overlooked."
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The Fair is an exhibit that takes over a 5,000 square-foot space on the fourth floor of Brickell City Center, 701 S. Miami Ave. All of the art work is by women, and none of it is for sale. Zoe Lukov, the director of exhibitions for Fanea Art in Miami, and Anthony Spinello, the founder of the Spinello Projects, a gallery and production house, co-curated the exhibit.

Lukov and Spinello gave young artists the opportunity to showcase their work next to established icons like the Guerrilla Girls, a group of anonymous activist artists that formed in New York City in 1985 who brought their impactful billboards, and Yoko Ono, who brought her Wish Tree installation.
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When Taja Lindley, 32, met Valdés, she smiled and complimented her Colored China Rags. The sculptural piece showcases a series of rags made out of bone china, a material that Valdés loves and said has more value when it's white. Valdés inserted the pigment's of different skin tones into the clay and placed them from darkest to lightest on the wall.
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Lindley, 32, flew from Brooklyn to Miami for her first exhibit during Art Basel. She used black plastic garbage bags for both The Bag Lady Manifesta and This Ain’t A Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering, and she used white paint to write the names of black unarmed victims of police violence.

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