AVAF IN MIAMI – AN INSTALLATION AT THE BASS

The installation by the Brazilian art collective is drawn together around a sculptural theater and modular stage, which will be used for screenings, performances and other activations.

The São Paulo–based visual and performance art collective fuses drawing, sculpture, video and performance into large-scale installations and happenings where gender, politics and cultural codes freely interact. Inhabiting the social forms of discos and dance parties, avaf invites museum visitors to engage with the exhibition environment, creating lived experiences that contribute to the continually evolving social dynamics inherent in their work.

The collective reimagines artistic conventions and challenges the mythology of the singular artist, co-creating their projects alongside viewers and collaborators while fluidly traversing diverse themes and media. Often recycling imagery and objects from previous projects into new installations, avaf fosters an ongoing dialogue between past works and the associated narratives they generate in the present.

Originally installed at the home of Miami-based collectors Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, and premiering during the 2004 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, XI embodied a communal sense of excitement in the local arts scene and signaled Miami as a new global contemporary art destination. Fast-forward two decades and assume vivid astro focus – XI marks the twenty-year anniversary of that watershed moment and this groundbreaking work. The new iteration centers on the video program Butch Queen Realness with a Twist in Pastel Colors, a compilation of over 100 short videos running seven hours by a host of artists and collectives.

This presentation ranges from historical work by such figures as László Moholy-Nagy and Paul Sharits, to more recent work by Mike Bell-Smith, Miguel Calderón, Dearraindrop, Black Leotard Front, Kembra Pfahler and Zoie Rizzuto. Interspersed are music videos by Blondie, Grace Jones, and Kraftwerk, and footage from Soul Train in the 1970s, underground performances at New York’s Pyramid Club in the 1980s, and Harlem vogue balls in the 1990s. Elsewhere are works by artists Charles Atlas, Marco Boggio Sella, Michael Lazarus, Aleksandra Mir, and Justin Samson, alongside General Idea’s AIDS wallpaper. Queerness—less an overt reference to sexuality than a strategy to destabilize the status quo—is the prominent, pulsing thread running through XI.

avaf’s installations showcase the flexible, open-ended and collaborative ethos that drives their practice, blurring lines between exhibition, performance and immersive experience. The generosity and openness of their approach to art-making welcomes a multitude of figures and ideas into the fold, possessing extraordinary relevance, even urgency, today as the social and political climate exhibit increasing hostility toward difference.

The exhibition celebrates the de la Cruzes’ 2024 gift of XI to The Bass, reconfigured in the museum’s Gallery 5.