Popular curator takes on Art Toronto exhibit
Seasoned museum director behind installation featuring Latin American artists
Abaseh Mirvali is drop-dead gorgeous, but don’t let that alone threaten you. The Iranian-American star curator and former museum director glamorously divides her time between Mexico City and Berlin, speaks perfect English, Spanish, Turkish and Farsi, and was recently photographed for a story in British Vogue.
The afternoon we meet at the convention centre, where she has been whisked in by the organizers of Art Toronto to curate a special exhibition of Latin American contemporary art, Mirvali is rocking the offhand-chic of a grey cashmere turtleneck, leather drawstring pants, snakeskin sneakers, a Goyard tote and a Celine jacket (“I am obsessed with Celine. I’ve written so many letters to Phoebe Philo, she probably thinks I am a stalker”). After charming one of the lighting guys to hoist her up in his cherrypicker so that she can snap overhead pictures of her installation on her iPhone, she is quite literally on a pedestal.
It is perhaps fitting — if not particularly ideal — that Toronto’s art week, with Art Toronto and the smaller, rival Feature fair (a more boutique and curated event which, since its launch last year, has pushed the more established Art Toronto to raise the bar on its game, hence the import of art-world stars such as Mirvali) happens to fall on the very same week as Toronto’s Fashion Week.
As the nexus between art and fashion grows ever closer, with art museums getting record attendance for what are essentially fashion shows (McQueen to Bowie) and fashion brands opening their own art museums (Fondazione Prada to Fondation Louis Vuitton), it seems that for the fashionable, the art fair is beating out the runway as the place to see and be seen.
At this month’s VIP opening of London’s Frieze fair, which was packed to the rafters with what was possibly the best-dressed crowd I have ever encountered (and that’s including my fair share of fashion events), I spotted both a mahogany Valentino making his entrance and U.K. designer Paul Smith chatting animatedly on his phone.
Fashionability, of course, is in itself a business plan. Art Basel Miami is now such a must on the social calendars of the fabulous that the art fair’s popularity has sparked Miami’s vibrant contemporary art scene along with the revival and redevelopment of its design and art districts.
Fashionability, in part, explains why Damien Hirst’s “Holbein (Artist’s Watercolours)” sold for $1.2 million at White Cube’s booth in the first hour at Frieze. Why Susy Oliviera’s palm triptych was snapped up by the curators for TD Bank at the Feature preview before the doors opened to the public. And why designer Jeremy Laing was there, along with the Torontonians who actually buy and wear designer clothes, rather than in the tents for World Master Card Fashion Week at David Pecaut Square.
For her part, along with fretting over the lighting of her exhibition (“you have to be able to take a good picture of the work — we can’t deny the power of Instagram”), Mirvali was fretting over what to wear to the opening-night preview. “I hear this is a fairly conservative town,” says Mirvali. “Should I wear a dress or maybe a dressy top, but with gold platform shoes?” Karen von Hahn is a Toronto-based writer, trend observer and style commentator. Contact her at kvh@karenvonhahn.com.
As the nexus between art and fashion grows ever closer, it seems that for the fashionable the art fair is beating out the runway as the place to see and be seen