NADA Miami 2020 Concludes In-Person And Online Fair With Diverse International Presentations, Dynamic Programming, And High Viewership

NADA Miami, presented by the New Art Dealers Alliance, concluded its 2020 online and in-person fair on Saturday, December 5 with diverse international presentations, dynamic programming, and high viewership with 12,000 total visitors and nearly 350,000 total views. The eighteenth edition of the fair featured 97 exhibitors from 44 cities, including Brussels, Detroit, Lima, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, and Warsaw. NADA Miami will remain documented online as a digital catalogue, viewable here.

The new reformatted edition of the fair featured both in-person and online presentations, where exhibitors were invited to take creative approaches in their presentations and collaborate with other participants. The public programming series featured a range of compelling online conversations, panel discussions, and performances, including a conversation between artist Baseera Khan and Studio Coordinator Jazmine Catasús about Khan's new suite of prints; a puppet theater performance by artist Wendy Cabrera Rubio; a dramatic reading and conversation with renowned performance artist Karen Finley and Rachel Mason, director of the documentary Circus of Books; and a panel discussion around the book launch of artist Maya Stovall's new book Liquor Store Theatre. Recordings of public programs can be viewed online here.

The fair's newly-designed digital format also included editorial features with curators, advisors, and collectors, who share some of their favorite artworks on view during the fair, including Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) Curator Maria Elena Ortiz, ICA Miami Curator Stephanie Seidel, Co-founder of the VW Foundation Vita Liberte, collectors Ichiro Fukano, Helena Czernecka, and art advisors Maria Brito, and Ana Sokoloff. Read the editorial features on NADA's website here.

NADA MIAMI 2020 HIGHLIGHTS

Embajada's Fifth Anniversary Exhibition
Embajada (San Juan) celebrated its fifth anniversary with a group exhibition entitled documento, which was also on view in NADA Miami's viewing room. The presentation focused on new and recent work by eight artists of Puerto Rican and Mexican descent: Gabriella Torres Ferrer, Jorge González, Daniel Lind Ramos, Claudia Peña Salinas, Manuel Mendoza Sánchez, Chemi Rosado-Seijo, ASMA, and Radames "Juni" Figueroa.

Qualeasha Wood at Kendra Jayne Patrick
Kendra Jayne Patrick (New York) debuted Qualeasha Wood's newest tapestry works, high-contrast tufted wool and acrylic pieces that continue the artist's thoughts about the relationship between the avatar and the self. While the tapestries are weaved by a powerful machine and depict social media-esque self portraits of the artist, Wood applies each individual thread to the tufted works by hand. The result of such a physical, analog process is a depiction of a less literal self and a more literal interpretation of blackness-as-experience.

Carole Harris, Jova Lynne, and Tyanna Buie at Simone DeSousa Gallery
Simone DeSousa Gallery (Detroit) presented work by three Detroit-based artists known for pushing the limits of their practices, and for their engagement with the community: Carole Harris, Jova Lynne, and Tyanna Buie. The project celebrates a multi-generational group of relevant contemporary black female artists currently practicing in the city of Detroit, but of very different backgrounds: Carole Harris, a fiber artist and longtime resident of the city; Jova Lynne, an interdisciplinary conceptual artist and curator of Jamaican and Colombian heritage, born and raised in New York City, and currently based in Detroit; and Tyanna Buie, a Chicago, IL and Milwaukee, WI native, who moved to Detroit to take a position as Assistant Professor/Section Chair of Printmaking at the College for Creative Studies.

FROM THE DEALERS

"We had a great experience at the fair. Despite this year's unique circumstances, NADA's presentation was still able to retain a palpable level of the exciting fair-week energy. Sales exceeded expectations and we generated a good amount of new interest in our artists."
- Ethan Tate, Founder, in lieu, Los Angeles

"Our first time participation at NADA coincided with our announcement to add commercial operations to our institution's decade long non-profit legacy, giving Kim? an exciting opportunity to reach new audiences and obtain significant press coverage. Our online presentation of artists Indriķis Ģelzis and Elza Sīle raised interest and inquiries by collectors locally and internationally, resulting in the sale of works by both artists. While the NADA Miami 2020 has concluded its online fair, we expect additional sales from our in-person display "Black Market," at Kim? until January 31. In fact, just moments ago painting by artist Amanda Ziemele was confirmed for an in-person sale."
- Zane Onckule, curator and Program Director, Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga

"We had an excellent fair week at NADA. Our sale highlights include three works by LaKela Brown, two works by Maya Stovall, as well as works by Nikita Gale, Nick Doyle, and James Benjamin Franklin. It was great to realize the booth here at home in Detroit, allowing the gallery's unique architecture to bolster the artists' works, and to engage with a larger audience through our virtual showroom. This has been our most successful online pursuit yet!"
- Bridget Finn, Founder, Reyes | Finn, Detroit

"It was really exciting to see all the energy around the fair that definitely helped Guimi's work reach a new audience. We were really happy with the strong sales and encouraged that people are increasingly willing to buy work from artists they are being introduced to through this platform."
- Helena Anrather, Director, Helena Anrather, New York

PROGRAMMING HIGHLIGHTS

Reading: Karen Finely, Speaking Up & Out
Renowned performance artist Karen Finley gave a short dramatic reading from her book Grabbing Pussy, followed by a lively conversation with Rachel Mason, director of the documentary Circus of Books. Finely discussed her role of the artist as historical recorder and how her practice is part of a tradition of the artist representing society, policy and the marginalized.

Performance: Wendy Cabrera Rubio, Economías del Pacífico
Artist Wendy Cabrera Rubio enacted a live puppet theater performance that was created, written and directed by the artist for the current exhibition with Anonymous Gallery. The performance, Economías del Pacífico, explores the travels made by Disney to Latin America as part of "Pan-American" initiatives for the production of educational propaganda through animated films.

Discussion: Maya Stovall's Liquor Store Theatre Book Launch
Reyes | Finn and White Columns partnered with NADA to host a book launch and panel discussion in celebration of the release of Dr. Maya Stovall's new book, Liquor Store Theatre, which focuses on Stovall's series of site-specific dance interventions that began in 2014, staged in front of liquor stores in her McDougall-Hunt neighborhood in Detroit.

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