Faena Festival During Miami Art Week (December 2-8, 2019): The Last Supper.
To Feature Seminal Works, New Commissions, Installations, Films, and Performances by Sophia Al-Maria, Yael Bartana, Myrlande Constant, Gabriel Chaile, Jim Denevan, Camille Henrot, Zhang Huan, The Propeller Group, Christian Jankowski, Jumana Manna, Jillian Mayer, Ana Mendieta, Pedro Neves Marques, Emeka Ogboh, Grethell Rasúa, Faith Ringgold, Martha Rosler, Jamilah Sabur, Osías Yanov and Lulo Demarco and Lunafridge.
Supper Series Includes Culinary Activations and Shared Meals by Jim Denevan, Lunafridge, and Francis Mallmann and Paul Qui.
Running from December 2 through 8, 2019, the Faena Festival: The Last Supper is an exploration of spirituality and food, abundance and sacrifice, indulgence and abstinence, and archetypal symbolism and contemporary aesthetics.
The Last Supper will include: new commissions by Sophia Al-Maria, Gabriel Chaile, Myrlande Constant, Emeka Ogboh, Osías Yanov and Jamilah Sabur; installations by Camille Henrot, Zhang Huan, and The Propeller Group; an LED billboard boat on the waterways of Miami, which will serve as a platform for mobile video installations by Jillian Mayer and Ana Mendieta; a Cinema Series with nightly screenings by Yael Bartana, Christian Jankowski, Jumana Manna, Pedro Neves Marques, Grethell Rasúa, and Martha Rosler; and a Supper Series, featuring culinary activations and shared meals by Jim Denevan, Lunafridge, and Francis Mallmann and Paul Qui, among others. All programs will be free and open to the public.
Curated by Zoe Lukov, Chief Curator at Faena Art, the Festival takes the pulpit and the kitchen as its point of departure, invites us to break bread together, and posits the shared meal or prayer as the crux of social interaction and communal connectivity. The works in the Festival are dialectical, simultaneously object-based and immersive, sacred and profane, and laden with tradition along with contemporary expressions of spiritual practices. The works establish a multiplicity of viewpoints surrounding our ceremonial rituals and objects, and their broader roles within cultural imaginings and narratives from around the world. The experiential presentation and curatorial format will occupy and engage with the entire Faena District.
“Art and spirituality have been linked forever—objects have always been made with intention, imbued with symbolism, and have acquired power and capital from the significance applied to them. Feasting and fasting, traditions that we have developed around shared meals and shared spiritual experiences, are often the bedrock of our lives, from the wafer and wine that were the body and the blood, to the ‘bread and circuses’ that marked imperial decadence, to the sanctity of one’s right to a last meal, or the offerings we leave our ancestors. We have often turned to spirituality or food for solace and healing, and this Festival wants us to catch the spirit,” said Lukov.
Alan Faena stated, “I created the Festival to be an incubator for new talents and ideas that inspire me, a space for connectivity, and to support artists to realize their dream projects, push limits and blur boundaries across artistic disciplines, and ultimately to generate new dialogues, narratives, and experiences.”
The Last Supper will feature seminal works and newly-commissioned installations and performances by renowned and emerging artists throughout the Faena District.