Nicholas Galanin’s “Seletega” at Faena Beach in Miami Beach is a site-specific art installation that recalls the Spanish galleons of the 16th century, symbolizing the irreversible impact of European colonialism on Indigenous lands. Rising over forty feet, the work features masts and sails partially buried in sand, reminiscent of Cortés’s strategy in 1519 of burning ships to commit his troops to conquest without retreat. The artwork, named after a phrase meaning “run, see if people are coming” in Lingít and Spanish, directly links this historical moment to themes of commitment and irreversible action. Galanin uses his art to critique colonial legacies and advocate for Indigenous rights.

Nicholas Galanin: Seletega (run, see if people are coming/corre a ver si viene gente) / Faena Beach, Miami Beach. December 7, 2024.

— Right-click (Mac: ctrl-click) this link to download Quicktime video file.

Exhibition text (excerpt):

Partially buried on the sands of Faena Beach, Tlingit/Unangax artist Nicholas Galanin presented a monumental site-specific installation, Seletega (run, see if people are coming/corre a ver si viene gente), in the form of a Spanish galleon’s masts, sails, and rigging emerging from under the sand. The work by Galanin rise over forty feet in height, tying the occupation of Indigenous Land to the initial invasion of the “Americas” to extract wealth for European aristocracy. In 1519, Cortés led a Spanish expedition to Mexico and ordered his ships to be scuttled. This was done to motivate his crew, who were exhausted after the long journey and to prevent them from retreating or joining forces with an enemy. Cortés’s actions sent a clear message to his men: there was no turning back. The Spanish expression quemar las naves (burn the ships) means to eliminate the possibility of retreating before a problem.

The masts and sails of the galleon in this work evoke a decisive moment, symbolizing a point of no return, where past actions force a commitment to a new, uncertain future. This act, like burning one’s ships, speaks to the irreversible choice to move forward without the option of retreating, of charting a new course and never going back and the act of giving oneself to a cause or belief.

Spray painted on the sails in Spanish and English (the first languages to colonize the Americas): “What are we going to give up to burn the sails of empire? Qué vamos a renunciar para quemar las velas y los aparejos del imperio? What are we going to build for our collective liberation? Qué vamos a construir para nuestra liberación colectiva?” These questions, marked on the sails, speak to past and present, asking visitors to consider their roles and responsibilities in shaping the future. Just as the ships were burned to make retreat impossible, the work asks us to reflect on what we must let go of to move towards collective liberation.

Galanin’s work engages deeply with social issues, particularly those impacting Indigenous communities, inviting dialogues between Indigenous and non-Indigenous experience.

About the artist

Nicholas Galanin’s sculptures and multimedia installations reflect his heritage as a Tlingit and Unangax̂ artist while confronting colonial violences, including the ongoing exploitation of Indigenous culture. Asserting Indigenous autonomy and agency, his works often critique the spaces they inhabit. His contribution to the 2020 Biennale of Sydney, Shadow on the Land, dug a monumental grave for colonizer Captain James Cook; for the 2021 Desert X exhibition in California, Galanin erected the phrase “INDIAN LAND” in highly visible letters on Cahuilla ancestral territory and has participated in the 2017 Venice Biennale. Nicholas Galanin earned a BFA at London Guildhall University (2003), an MFA at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand (2007), and apprenticed with master carvers and jewelers. He currently lives and works with his family in Sitka, Alaska. Galanin participated in Desert X, Palm Springs (2021); Biennale of Sydney (2020); Venice Biennale (2017); Whitney Biennial (2019); and Honolulu Biennial (2019). Galanin’s work is in permanent collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Detroit Institute of Arts; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Denver Art Museum; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Princeton University. He received an award from American Academy of Arts and Letters (2020) and received a Soros Arts Fellowship (2020).

The Art Space Hebel_121 in Basel (Switzerland) just opened a show titled “Göttin + Maise: Videos Loops Tapes Frames Works”. In the front space the exhibition features videos in loops that change every day. On the occasion of the opening reception, a video documenting Daniel Göttin’s 2012 exhibition at Raketenstation Hombroich in Neuss (Germany), where he transformed four shipping containers with his tapes. The front space also features tapes as frames and sculptures (Block B1/9-B1/12, 2020/2021) by Daniel Göttin. In the back space additional works by Göttin are on display: Flat Plain (C1-C4, 2022) and Flat Fold (D1-D9, 2022). The exhibition runs until February 22, 2025.

Hebel_121 is an art space, where artits have the opportunity to develop a site specific work in the front space, combined with an exhibition in the back space. The exhibition can be seen day and night. Hebel_121 has presented an international program since 1998.

Göttin + Maise: Videos Loops Tapes Frames Works. Vernissage, January 4, 2025.

— Right-click (Mac: ctrl-click) this link to download Quicktime video file.

Within the framework of the art event PST ART: Art & Science Collide, the Getty Center in Los Angeles presents the exhibition “Lumen: The Art and Science of Light”. Being human means yearning for light. Our daily routines revolve around the sun’s cycles, and we’ve historically linked light to the divine. Focusing on the artistic traditions of Western Europe, “Lumen” investigates how Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinkers, theologians, and artists examined the nature of light during the “long Middle Ages” (800-1600 CE). In this era, the study of science—understanding the physical world—bridged various cultures across Europe and the Mediterranean, bringing together scholars who built upon and enhanced the shared legacy of ancient Greek knowledge. The exhibition features also contemporary works. Lumen: The Art and Science of Light at the Getty Center runs until December 8, 2024.

Lumen: The Art and Science of Light / Getty Center, Los Angeles. October 13, 2024.

Born in Miami to Cuban parents, José Parlá’s art reflects his upbringing between the U.S. and Puerto Rico, drawing on Caribbean and Latin American influences like music, dance, and urban decay. His work features hybrid abstraction through unique mark-making, focusing on movement and layering. Pérez Art Museum Miami hosts “José Parlá: Homecoming,” his first hometown solo show, featuring new works and a live mural. After a severe bout with COVID-19 in 2021, which included a coma, stroke, and brain bleeding, this exhibition symbolizes his recovery and return to his roots, showcasing his resilience and cultural identity.

José Pará: Homecoming / Pérez Art Museum Miami. October 6, 2024.

— Right-click (Mac: ctrl-click) this link to download Quicktime video file.

Exhibition text (excerpt):

Born in Miami to Cuban parents, artist José Parlá (b. 1973, Miami; lives in New York) was raised between mainland United States and Puerto Rico. Influenced by his proximity to Caribbean and Latin American countries, he developed an interest in diverse cultural traits, including Cuban music, hip hop, reggae, calligraphy, dance, and urban architecture and its decay, all of which would become recurring themes in his work. Consistent with his blended culture, Parlá is interested in hybrid forms of abstraction. Through a unique mark-making process, grounded in movement and bodily gestures, Parlá produces a painterly stream of consciousness characterized by addition, erasure, and layering. His physical and textural artistic process challenges conventional visual culture.

Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) is honored to be hosting Parlá’s first solo museum exhibition in his hometown. Featuring a new series of never-before-seen works and a site-specific mural, José Parlá: Homecoming will ultimately mirror the artist’s studio. An elaborate, two-part exhibition will allow visitors to observe Parlá’s dance-like technique in real time as he paints a site-specific mural for the first iteration of the exhibition. The second iteration will see the museum gallery transformed and converted into Parlá’s studio—a room full of paint-covered tables, a lively Cuban-inspired record collection, and decades of Parla’s archival memorabilia.

In 2021, Parlá contracted a life-threatening case of COVID-19—he was hospitalized and endured a four-month coma during which he suffered a stroke and significant brain bleeding. A radical departure from the traditional use of space in a museum, this presentation not only represents a homecoming to Miami, but also marks a return to himself and his practice after this experience. Celebrating the spirit of resilience and returning to one’s roots, José Parlá: Homecoming is a testament to the profound connections among personal history, art, and creative expression. In addition to the completed mural and studio re-creation, the exhibition will also feature a number of recent works Parlá created upon his return to painting. The result is a process-focused exhibition highlighting an expressionistic painter who conscientiously engages with issues relating to Cuban and broader diasporic identity.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, showcases “Keiichi Tanaami: Memory Collage,” the pioneering Japanese Pop artist’s first US solo museum exhibition. Spanning his career from 1965 to 2024, the show explores Tanaami’s response to post-war cultural shifts through collage, painting, and animation. His works are a vivid critique of desire and violence in society, reflecting his personal experiences during WWII’s end in Japan. Tanaami’s art merges Western and Japanese influences, tackling themes from war trauma to the commercialization of desire. The exhibition, curated by Alex Gartenfeld and Gean Moreno with Donna Honarpisheh, highlights Tanaami’s significant impact on art and design.

Keiichi Tanaami: Memory Collage / Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Miami. December 6, 2024.

Exhibition text (excerpt):

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, presents “Keiichi Tanaami: Memory Collage,” the artist’s first US solo museum exhibition. Keiichi Tanaami (1936-2024, Tokyo) has been a pioneering figure in Japanese and global Pop art for seven decades, creating magnificently immersive works across media in order to consider American and Japanese culture in the post-war period. Tanaami anticipated the crossover of popular culture and fine art, and through his connections to design has taken a radical and critical approach to how images of desire and violence transform society. Works included in this exhibition, produced between 1965 and 2024, track the artist’s use of collage to express the complex media landscape of our time.
Tanaami’s life and work are deeply informed by his upbringing in Japan, the trauma of the Second World War, and the country’s postwar reconstitution. Although the war had forced Tanaami and his mother to flee to the countryside in 1943, the massive United States air raids on Tokyo at the end of the conflict, as well as his experience in air raid shelters, had immense impact on the then-nine-year-old boy and continue to haunt his imagination. Tanaami’s hallucinatory works brim with American airplanes, search lights, monsters real and imagined, and fleeing masses. Sexual images permeate his works across decades, as do synthetic colors; Tanaami records popular culture commercializing desire in order to suppress the devastation of war. Tanaami graduated from the Musashino Art University, Kodaira, Japan, with a degree in graphic design in 1960. He forged a successful career in design and advertising, working as the first art director of Japanese Playboy and creating record covers for Jefferson Airplane and the Monkees, which contributed to the introduction of psychedelic culture in Japan.

During the 1960s, Taanami’s artistic practice frequently took the form of exuberant collages overflowing with clippings from international magazines. These dense collages are fascinating indexes of postwar visual culture, drawing from Western and Japanese news sources, commercial forms, and chapbooks. Tanaami would also elaborate on these fantastic sets of images through engagingly musical, surreal, and psychedelic animations that today are classics of avant-garde film.

Combining disparate media, Tanaami creates worlds that explore how war distorts perception through fragmentation, nightmares, and hallucinatory visions. During the 1970s, Tanaami’s iconic paintings combine idyllic landscapes with advertising, erotic imagery and anti-war slogans. Over subsequent decades, Tanaami would continually expand these worlds, quoting manga, theater and increasingly art history, from sources as varied as the sixteenth-century French School of Fontainebleau and Japanese woodblock (ukiyo-e). In recent years the artist has explored the role of the artist in visual culture through his Pleasure of Picasso (2020–) series, which make playful and technical use of appropriation and repetition while considering the flattening of social and commercial art and history today.

Additionally, the exhibition concisely surveys Tanaami’s recent work, a period of great productivity and experimentation for the artist. In epically large-scale painting and complex moving image, the artist has deployed technology to scale his kaleidoscopic visions. Through these radically produced, digitally printed and visually saturated paintings, Tanaami reflects on a contemporary regime of pervasive images, and the ever-present specter of history.

“Keiichi Tanaami: Memory Collage” is organized by ICA Miami and curated by Alex Gartenfeld, Irma and Norman Braman Artistic Director, and Gean Moreno, Director of the Art + Research Center at ICA Miami, with the assistance of Donna Honarpisheh, Associate Curator of the Art + Research Center at ICA Miami.