‘GO BIG OR GO HOME’
Miami Worldcenter reveals its downtown outdoor museum
draped in white dance around a drum circle alongside the mangroves. Mermaids wave as manatees swim nearby. Stars and leaves swirl through the air. An alligator grins.
This magical and surreal version of Miami — a mural by artist Viktor El-Saieh called “I of the Spiral” — overlooks the reality of noisy, dusty construction sites of Miami Worldcenter, a sprawling multiuse complex in the heart of downtown.
The mural was unveiled Monday along with other works by international and local artists as part of the Worldcenter’s public-art program, a $5 million “outdoor museum” curated by renowned art dealer Jeffrey Deitch and Primary, a Miami-based curatorial collective that focuses on public art.
The unveiling came at the start of Miami Art Week and the 20th anniversary of Art Basel Miami Beach. The program was several years in the making as Worldcenter’s developers prioritized incorporating public art into the 27-acre, $4 billion mixed-use space. The area — which will include retail, luxury condos, hotels, and restaurants — is one of the largest private real-estate developments in the U.S. and rivals New York City’s Hudson Yards.
The public-art initiative includes murals and sculptures by acclaimed masters such as Nick Cave along with emerging artists such as El-Saieh, a Miamiraised painter of Haitian and Palestinian heritage. Deitch said the program provides up-and-coming artists with a platform to boost their careers and international recognition.
“He’s created his own world in this image that is his combination of dreamworld Miami and realworld Miami,” Deitch said as he looked up at ElSaieh’s mural. “This is exactly what we were trying to do: create something excellent that’s also very accessible.”
Every piece on display at Worldcenter is figurative, which means it depicts people. That’s unusual for a public art program, Deitch said. Usually, developers install abstract art in public spaces that is neutral, open to interpretation and inoffensive. But Deitch and Primary wanted viewers to be able to relate and connect to the artworks.
Nitin Motwani, the Worldcenter managing partner, said the value of the public art is “intangible” and part of the development’s long-term comWomen
mitment to downtown Miami.
“It’s giving people that constant reason to come back and take a look around,” Motwani said. “You don’t have to spend money. You just have to come here and you can enjoy world-class art.”
Other murals included in the program reflect different aspects of Miami, too. Nina Chanel Abney, a rising star who has a show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, completed a massive and ambitious mural inspired by the historically Black neighborhood of Overtown. Nearby, local artist Hernan Bas depicted a storied day in Miami history on the side of a building: the day it snowed in Miami.
The mural shows a surprised young man leaning against his car as he watches snow gently cover
pink lawn flamingos and palm trees. Bas said he wanted to memorialize the kind of local history that people still talk about. The date, January 19, 1977, is sprawled on the snowcovered windshield.
“It’s my first public anything,” Bas said. “So go big or go home.”
The sculptures featured at Worldcenter are just as colorful and striking. One piece that’s destined to end up on your Instagram feed is “Undom Endgle (Undom Endgle and the Mound Meat Cycle),” a superhero goddess by Trenton Doyle Hancock.
The sculpture is a “total embodiment of afrofuturism,” Deitch said. The superhero is a Black woman wearing a bright cobalt bodysuit, brilliant red lipstick, green and orange go-go boots and Speed Racer-esque helmet. She stands defiantly, surrounded by rings of hot pink spheres. Her eyes are flames and her nose is a cute green button. (Eat your heart out, Marvel.)
“It evokes power. He’s able to create something monumental,” Deitch said. “Usually, it’s [statues of] old white men on a horse. This is a different version of the superhero.”
For Woody De Othello, a California-based artist who was born and raised in Miami, Worldcenter’s program was an opportunity for him to bring his artwork to an outdoor, public space in his hometown for the first time.
Othello, who usually works with ceramics, created “Some Time Moves Fast, Some Time Moves Slow,” a deep blue bronze sculpture of a kneeling figure clutching clocks.
The piece was inspired by how strange the passage of time felt during the COVID-19 pandemic, Othello said. He wanted people to be able to relate to the artwork and explore it, especially since it looks so strange.